EDITORIAL: Working toward America’s future

The United States of America will be 241 years old on Tuesday, which means, especially over this weekend and the next few days, we’ll be hearing a lot about what America means, what it means to love your country, and about patriotism.

And, we’ll also be hearing from many about where America has fallen short on its promises, those who feel the red, white and blue banner doesn’t represent them.

And that, as much as anything else, is what is remarkable about this nation we live in. While expressing opinions in recent years have been more in the form of setting destructive wildfires than prescription burns meant to better the landscape, we still live in a nation where you are free to speak your mind. It doesn’t mean that others can’t disagree with you. It doesn’t mean they can’t take you to task. It doesn’t mean they have to be nice in expressing their dislike for what you say or do. It doesn’t even mean they can’t tell you to shut up.

But it does mean that no one — another person or the government (especially the government) — can make you shut up.

Frankly, we wish the discourse was more civil. Disagreement doesn’t have to be disagreeable. We live in a time, for whatever reason, in which emotions seem to rule the day, and there are people and organizations who are adept at playing on emotions. Marshalling support for a foregone conclusion has taken precedence over critical consideration and study of an event or issue.

We’ve also seen a widening gap in many areas as individuals and organizations have placed their own interests first, far ahead of the needs of the nation as a whole. The U.S. motto E pluribus unum — out of many, one — seems to have been replaced by (at least according to Google Translate) Via mea non in via — my way or the highway.

We could use a good dose of plain old patriotism right now.

By that, we don’t mean a blind patriotism that does not see any need for improvement. America, as we have said many times in the past, is a great experiment, one that is still going on. Our Republic must continuously look at how its mixes its ingredients to get the right balance. Too much of this, and you can have a poisonous result. Too much of that, an explosion. It’s a never-ending process.

We’re talking about a patriotism that is, at heart, a deep love for our country, a desire to make it better for our sake, for the sake of our fellow citizens, and, most importantly, for the sake of those who will inherit it in future generations.

More than two centuries ago, a few men and women did that. They risked their livelihoods and their very lives to create something on this Earth that has been neither duplicated nor surpassed.

As our politics move further to the left and the right, the political middle has become strained like a stretched rubber band. We cannot afford for it to snap. We could do a lot to prevent that by withholding immediate judgment, listening to other views and looking for ways to join together rather than tear apart.

In fact, if we all just listened, perhaps there wouldn’t be a need to shout and be uncivil just to be heard. Imagine what, for instance, the American health care system could be if our leaders simply worked together instead of at odds.

Perhaps on the nation’s birthday on Tuesday we can each take a moment to ask ourselves how we have carried the mantle in our own generation. As our generation depended on those before us, future generations are depending on us. We can’t allow ourselves to let them down.