America: Its Greatness Is Timeless

Make America Great Again?

That phrase has never made much sense to me because I've never been able to wrap my head around what it was supposed to mean.

The phrase forces you to try to think of a time when America was great, but that’s a foolhardy errand. You can’t look backwards and see America’s greatness because it’s not there, it's here.

Despite the boast of “equal opportunity for all,” discrimination has been with us since our founding. Consequently, America has never been "great" for at least a portion of the population.

When we were founded, you had to be a landowner to vote and a black person wasn’t even counted as a full person. LGBTQ people have had to live in fear, and are still discriminated against in some parts of the country. A woman couldn’t vote, and didn’t have a right to make certain medical decisions about her own body, and they still don’t get equal pay.

There has never been a time when America WAS great.

America IS Great!

Our greatness isn’t tied to a time in the past; America’s greatness is ever-present.

Our founding fathers wove America’s greatness into the fabric of the country. They gave America its greatness when they gave us the ability to make it better, and over time that’s what we’ve done.

At the end of the Pledge Of Allegiance is the promise of "liberty and justice for all," and although that goal is elusive, it is one worth striving for. 

Sometimes it feels like we’ve fought very hard to take three steps forward, when we are forced to take two giant strides back, but the net result is still progress. 

America will never arrive at that place called “great” because we will always be in the process of making it better. America’s greatness is the journey; it’s not a destination. There will always be something to fix, but thankfully we have the ability to fix it.

America is great because we the people have an opportunity to make America better.