I am ashamed to be an American.
How is that I can be ashamed to be an American?
“These
are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis,
shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves
the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict,
the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:
it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a
proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an
article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
Thomas
Paine The American Crisis (1776)
I can be ashamed to be an American, because I can also proud
to be an American. That pride and shame come mixed together is right and
correct. How could I lay some claim to a share of America’s glories and
triumphs, our virtues and victories, if I do not also claim a share too of our
defeats and failures, our vices and shames? I personally am not responsible for
any of these things. Only a person of low and contemptible character would
behave in such a way, a sunshine patriot who abandons any cause or loyalty the
moment it becomes difficult, who spurns any love that might become complicated.
It is easier, I suppose, for such a person to pretend there is no tension
between the good and bad of American history, that ours is one of uncomplicated
moral rightness and that the American state or the American people have never
been in any way villainous, and to subscribe to a simple-minded version of
events in which “We” are the “Good Guys” and “They” are the “Bad Guys”.
But I am not such a coward, and cannot turn away from
uncomfortable truths. It is a fact apparent to all who care to know that American history is
replete with the successes of American science, technology and industry, with
triumphs of American arms, and a culture with as much reach and influence as
any other in the history of humankind. We put a man on the moon! There is no
place in this world far from American soldiery, no place where American music
cannot be heard. (Whether this a good thing is another question entirely…). But
history is a bottomless well of horrors, and our well might be shallower, but
o! how horrible the horrors are. I’ll not trouble your stomachs by describing
to them to you in any great detail, a simple list should suffice to remind you.
The violence and endless broken promises with which
Americans have dealt to indigenous peoples, the brutal and savage institution
of slavery, and the long train of racial injustices that spawned leading up to
the present day, the oppression of women, the closing of our borders to people
in need, the internment of Japanese-Americans, our involvement in foreign
nations, first in Latin America and then throughout the world, which betrayed
any humanitarian or democratic impulse to greed, hunger for power, and a
pursuit of bloody-handed empire. I cannot ignore these things for the same
reason I cannot ignore the sky.
In truth, I do not feel proud to be an American. I cannot
make a ledger of virtue and vice, sum up the good and the bad, and hold that
America is a thing to proud of on the net.
I am not the sort that thinks one can erase an act of evil with an act of kindness –
undo perhaps, but erase; never – and what has been done, the suffering that has
been caused is to much for me, my heart is to weighed down by shame to feel
much pride.
But there is hope. I think that there is some strain of
virtue in America, a history too of good intentions and high ideals, and I hope
that these things will in the end win out. I am not proud of America today, but
it is my hope that I will live to see the America made by the victory of those
ideals. An America I can be proud of.
