Does America fully employ and develop available talent? What obstacles or shackles might we remove? How can we make the American world greater than ever?
Every leap year, America reflects and institutes a constitutional sacrament as The People renew their government’s lease of legitimacy or transfer power for the next chapter of the American Dream.
The Constitution of the United States is secular; yet our money bears the words: “In God We Trust”, suggesting a belief in something greater than oneself. In our Declaration of Independence, a Christian proclamation of our intrinsic worth and equality before God gracefully supports the right of every creed, faith, and philosophy to practice, profess, persuade, and protest; to work, live, love, and pursue happiness!
Give me your tired, your poor,
— Poem by Emma Lazarus on bronze plaque in the Statue of Liberty
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Most attention is on the figurehead! Public servants will implement their promised agenda for all “The People” irrespective of political persuasion. They take a risk by choosing a career where they cannot be sure whether the next election will renew their term of employment. Sometimes they work in obscurity, sometimes under journalistic scrutiny. They convert a political vision into a constitutionally workable program of legislation and executive actions. While innocent until proven guilty, we rightly hold public servants to high standards as executors and arbiters of constitutional democracy.
Where America has fallen from its ideals, how might we “Make America Great Again?” 25–30 years after defending Bosnia & Kosovo from genocide, 80 years after our greatest generation and their allies liberated the world from tyranny, nursed refugees fleeing foreign despotism, and reunited the remnants of families divided by conflicts, concentration camps, and closing borders; are we still liberators? Did we close the Guantanamo Bay prison as promised, or open new concentration camps for central American toddlers?
Do the house, children, and friends of Israel still free the captive children of God? Does the party of Lincoln still stand for unity, equality, and freedom?
When the greatest Americans wrote “that all men are created equal”, what is the upside of that declaration for international neighbors, for U.S. Territories, for Puerto Rico, or even for women?
Does America remain a city set on a hill, a light to the world, a testament to each person’s infinite potential; a proof that shared power outcompetes a monopolar personality cult, a corrupt dynastic cabal, or a family business with a seat at the United Nations — even under the disguise of religion, socialism, or any other cloak of convenience or ideological pretense?
Power in foreign nations originates with the potentate (an incarnated guardian of constitutional norms), so that kings and presidents of some nations enjoy de-facto immunity and stand above the law. In American democracy checks and balances hold all branches and officers of government accountable. Legitimate power originates with the people. All Americans — including presidents — are under the equal protection of the laws! We speak truth to power. We rise above raw tribalism, deception, reactionary instinct; to judge from evidence, act on our conscience, and seek consensus.
Every citizen must guard the American dream and its constitutional protections. We must punish those who rebel or lead insurrections against it.
With equal protection comes equal responsibility and accountability. Per Adam Smith, mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. Is America so gullible or devoid of talent that the guilty must lead? Is our system so corrupt that the guilty can rise, and the conspirer can hold power? Or do we have the common sense to lift each other to a better place by supporting the best candidate regardless of color, gender, origin, or party?
Does compassion end with kin, tribe, or compatriot? Do we sympathize with strangers? Do we care for the sick, feed the hungry, relieve the disaster-stricken and give representation to the oppressed? Where are the boundaries of our love? Has the United States learned lessons in soft power from the former colonial master’s failure to feed the hungry when famine struck Ireland or India? Do we remember why we declared Independence, or how America surpassed empires that nursed conflict and prejudice to divide and conquer so a minority could stand above the law? May we ever!
— written as a friend of the United States
See also: Love Your Enemies (October 2020) by Elder Dallin H. Oaks, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.