What it means to be an American

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KENNETT, Mo. -- When I see the slogan "Proud to Be an American" -- pasted, no doubt, with a great amount of pride on cars, yard signs, store windows and even baseball caps -- I become if only for an instant more thoughtful.

To be perfectly frank, I often wonder if the publicist of these words really knows what it means to be an American, as if I had any insightful thoughts to share. Quite frankly, I don't, but if you've got a few minutes to spare, I would like to offer the best explanation that comes to me on this dreary, December-cold afternoon.

Let me say at the outset that although a great many religions caution against undue pride, I believe our nation has some right to evidence this sin if only because our form of government has stood the ravages of more than two centuries and most of the time it has been done staunchly, fearlessly and without false pride.

No nation in the history of man has displayed a greater compassion for others than the United States. While we have joined in numerous wars, we have done it to overcome totalitarian regimes that sought not freedom but dominance.

This is not to say all of our objectives have been pure as the driven snow, and it is certainly not to contend that our entry in certain conflicts has been wise or well thought out. As a former president once declared, "Mistakes have been made," and in this respect we have made our share.

When we speak of government today, we unconsciously assign a certain degree of partisan politics to its policies and behavior. We too often enhance the title of our national leader by describing him as the Republican in the White House or the Democrat who's leading the nation.

But one of the qualities of our citizenship is that it really has nothing to do with the formation of our basic values. These are not derived from campaign platforms nor from arguments between Bush and Gore or Kennedy and Nixon. Most of us are only mildly interested in the machinations of politics, despite their existence.

The beliefs we have come to believe in most deeply originate from generations that come from family immigrants who struggled to build a life for themselves and their children, from the churches we grew up in and where we heard biblical passages that both thrilled and mystified us and from an absorbing conviction that our America was a nation of laws.

These are our simple values, but they are important ones: the dignity of hard work, respect for family, respect for law and order; in other words a shameless, bold patriotism, a recognition of the vital importance of education, a gratitude for God's nature and a feeling of responsibility for it.

The unadorned ethics which our parents and their parents lived by have always seemed exactly right to me, even as a basis for the government that rules and guides us all.

While recognizing that we are too weak to live by this ethic perfectly, we are nevertheless called upon to try to do good things for other people. Prudently, without ignoring our obligations to ourselves, we have tried, realistically but insistently, to arrange a package of justice, charity and mercy that would be guaranteed and available to all we could touch.

We do not need courses in political science or esoteric tracts to teach us what the role of our government should be.

At the risk of repeating myself, we are entitled to all the government we need, but only the government we need.

Most of us believe government should, then, work to assure us opportunity while insisting we bear individual responsibility for providing all we can for ourselves.

Government should also protect our liberty -- our right to live securely and to express ourselves freely so long as we deny no one else the same right.

Government should see to it that the productive remain productive and, indeed, grow stronger.

But there are two major groups that deserve more of our government's efforts than they are receiving.

The first consists of those who work for a living because they have to, people not poor enough to be desperate but not rich enough to be worry-free.

The second is those people who are struggling to make it but, for whatever reason, cannot.

I believe many of us apply these basic principles to the small circle of our own family and beyond that the larger community, through a series of confrontations with those who argue for principles that seem indifferent to the plight of others and even more adamant in their strenuous efforts to deny them to others.

While our idea of how governments should behave is vitally important, is it not the only issue facing each generation.

We are concerned too with the role of government, an issue that has occupied an inordinate amount of time of congresses, federal and state courts and executive offices in Washington and 50 state capitals.

I believe strongly that most of us think our governments' roles should be based on the rule of law, while insisting on a sense of personal responsibility, the rejection of the survival of only the fittest, the need to see our disparate society as a family, the belief that work is better than welfare, and the idea that "economic growth" is the provider of the American dream.

I confess I am always a little uneasy using these sweeping ideas because I'm painfully aware that in governing, as elsewhere, the devil is in the details, and that's how policies are made and then executed.

Most of us are aware that there is a world of difference between the poetry of campaigns and the prose of governance. Perhaps it should be required that a label stating this truth be affixed to every speech or column that is published.

If you agree, please consider that I have now affixed my label: "Proud to Be an American.''

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.