LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: AMERICA 1994

To the Editor,

Once in awhile we ought to stop and remind ourselves what we have accomplished over the last 200 years, what we have become as a nation, without making it sound like a worn-out sermon or another boring graduation speech.

Leave out the parades and brass bands, wave off the suddenly eloquent politicians with an eye to reelection, drape the flag, snuff out the fireworks, and in a spirit of quiet reflection, without congratulating ourselves in advance, make our pilgrimage to the soul of America: The American people are the most generous, forgiving and self-critical people in the world.

We have accepted and fed and clothed and embraced and comforted and healed and taken in more strangers than any other nation in the history of the world. We have done this with a seemingly inborn and unself-conscious reflex of kindness and with the full knowledge that our open-handed generosity is all-too-often returned with envy, long-term dependence, ignorance and greed. We are a people generous to a fault and we claim no moral superiority in sharing our good will and hard-earned economic good fortune or in the willing spirit in which it is given.

We defeat and forgive our enemies until they become our best friends. We are slow to anger and quick to forget, overwhelming in war and always ready to lift a fallen foe to our own measure of equality. We return our enemies to their full humanity through our own example and then leave them alone to adopt and cultivate our greatest gift: freedom, according to their own manner and fashion. We do not practice torture, exact tribute from, or take vengeance upon our former enemies. We shed our best young blood, over and over again, in order to share the greatest dream the world has ever dreamed. We mingle familiarly with all, after the argument is over, and ask only that our citizen soldiers be returned home as quickly as possible to follow their peaceful pursuits.

No man is our master and we are servants of all. Arrogance and unbridled ambition is soon found out and humbled. Men who rise above their talents are brought back to their merited level of competence. Tyranny in every form is smelled out before it can enslave us. The charlatan is named and defamed; sleight-of-hand is brought into the full light of day. Every suspicion of inequality is sooner or later made to stand before the law. We are tireless in turning over our public conscience, self-critical to the point of undeserved and guilty breast-beating, allowing no one to dictate to us who has not earned his authority through sure knowledge, fundamental fairness and proven example.

Ted Hirschfield

Cape Girardeau