Myrtle Beach Sun News Logo

Letter | The importance of America the indispensable | Myrtle Beach Sun News

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
    • Customer Service
    • Subscribe
    • Activate Your Account
    • Account Support
    • Mobile Apps
    • Newsletters
    • The Sun News Store
    • FAQ
    • Cancel SunValues Delivery
    • Plan
    • All Tourist Info
    • Vacation Planner
    • Calendar
    • Where to Stay
    • Ask a Local
    • Festivals Guide
    • Best of the Area
    • Play
    • Nightlife
    • Golf
    • Shopping
    • Shows
    • Myrtle Beach Blog
    • Restaurants

  • Obituaries
    • All News
    • Local News
    • Crime/Courts
    • Business
    • State News
    • Nation/World
    • Weird News
    • More News
    • Politics
    • Myrtle Beach Bike Rallies
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Tourism News
    • Real Estate News
    • All Sports
    • High Schools
    • Coastal Carolina
    • Recreation
    • Golf
    • MB Pelicans
    • Auto Racing
    • More Sports
    • College Sports
    • NFL
    • MLB
    • MB Marathon
    • Toast Of The Coast
    • Green Reading Blog
    • The Roost Blog
    • All Opinion
    • Letters To The Editor
    • Submit A Letter
    • Editorial
    • Cartoons
    • Columns & Blogs
    • Bob Bestler
    • All Living
    • Coasting
    • Neighbors
    • Food
    • Best Of The Beach
    • Announcements
    • Religion
    • Travel
    • Pets
    • Home & Garden
    • All Entertainment
    • Kicks!
    • Best Of The Beach
    • Movies
    • Calendar
    • Contests
    • More Entertainment
    • Comics
    • Puzzles & Games
    • Horoscopes
    • Celebrities
    • Music
    • TV

  • Legals
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Homes
  • Classifieds
  • Classified Ads

  • About Us
  • Mobile & Apps

Letters to the Editor

Letter | The importance of America the indispensable

By James F. Burns

    ORDER REPRINT →

March 11, 2015 03:34 PM

Boris is bumped off on a bridge. Jihadi John enjoys beheadings. We see enough evil in plain sight to jump up and shout “Amen, brother!” if our preacher pounds the pulpit to emphasize man’s moral corruption. “Boris” is Boris Nemtsov, Mr. Putin’s former political enemy, and Jihadi John has been unmasked as a British college graduate named Mohammed Emwazi.

But rather than preach evil, let’s illustrate American Exceptionalism - which is the excellence of ideas and not the superiority of people - with an old-fashioned sleigh ride to school and a trip over the mountain in a rickety wagon. Mary and Clinton will be our guides.

Clinton speaks first: “The winter of 1856 was remarkable for the number of deep snows. My brother John, a lad of thirteen, yoked a young team of oxen, Buck and Berry, to a sled, filling the box with hay. With this rig, he took my sister and me, as well as our cousins Warren and William, to school the entire winter. I remember how the boys and girls piled into the sled box and stood upon the runners as we left the school in the evening.”

America is good but, no, not perfect. Clinton later darkly reported “the gathering of war clouds, the storm bursting in all its fury.” Two years later his brother John, a sergeant, was at Gettysburg, all five officers above him killed or incapacitated by bullets. Slavery was abolished, its malignant effects lingering a long time. John became a minister “to make the world a little better.”

SIGN UP

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to The Sun News

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

And while America improved, flaws remained. Women had few rights and no vote. Mary, a young art teacher, had her train ride from Ohio to Virginia stopped at Cumberland Gap by a caved-in tunnel through the mountain. At 5 a.m., she climbed into a wagon “with bony horses and a bony driver. Never expected the horses could get us over the mountain, but they did by stopping every 100 yards to rest. The rocks rose straight up on one side, straight down on the other, and a little jump to one side of the road would have made pressed beef of me. I’m glad the tunnel wasn’t fixed, for the experience was great.”

It was still a quarter-century from women’s suffrage, but Mary clearly had a sense of independence and freedom as well as an artist’s eye for natural beauty.

“On the summit, we were in three states at once - Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, and I in a fourth, a state of bliss. As far as the eye could see rose one mountain after another, a smoky blue haze hovering around the tops of all of them. The road was solid sandstone but with beautiful flowers growing out of the stones.”

Knowing nature overcame rocky impediments to flourish, Mary went into the book business in an era when few females ventured far from traditional roles. Like the flowers, and despite Kansas City’s muddy roads, when making her house calls in a horse-and-buggy, Mary flourished, years later leaving a sizeable estate to local charities. While some women got the vote in 1920, those of color would have to wait till the system more fully corrected. Mary was 98 when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. America had gotten better. More rights were yet to be gained, but we were making progress - a hundred yards at a time.

So how do you compare differing ideologies? A biblical yardstick, “By their fruits ye shall know them,” was translated into “Evil is as evil does” by no less a philosopher than Forrest Gump. We waste our time, while lives are being lost and antiquities destroyed, debating whether certain ideologies are peaceful, militant, religious, political, nationalistic, and so on.

America’s founders well knew of mankind’s instinctual weaknesses and lust but designed a self-correcting system of checks and balances with a fingers-crossed reliance on the underlying moral fabric of a God-fearing citizenry, many of whom had experienced the evils of other systems.

No, we’re not a superior people. But we were given a system of unique American Exceptionalism if, in Ben Franklin’s words, we can keep it.

If we can, the world will be a better and safer place.

The writer lives is a retired professor at the University of Florida, is Clinton Burns’ ancestral cousin and Mary Hosbrook Kincaid’s great-nephew.

  Comments  

Videos

UNC’s Roy Williams reacts to rumor that former President Obama might attend Duke-Carolina game

UNC’s Roy Williams on recruiting and now facing Duke’s Zion Williamson

View More Video

Trending Stories

Meet the Surfside Beach native who will be on CBS’ ‘Survivor: Edge of Extinction’

February 17, 2019 02:42 PM

Girlfriend let him have sex with another woman, but he lost his pants and $10K, NC cops say

February 17, 2019 05:25 PM

Dozens of Myrtle Beach, Horry firefighters responded to blaze near Fantasy Harbour

February 18, 2019 12:04 AM

He stole male enhancement pills from Walmart. Now, police are working on killing mood

February 17, 2019 05:50 PM

Mugshots, Feb. 17

February 17, 2019 11:47 AM

things to do

Read Next

Should we send students to jail for sassing the teacher?

Letters to the Editor

Should we send students to jail for sassing the teacher?

By Cindi Ross Scoppe Associate Editor

    ORDER REPRINT →

May 01, 2018 11:32 AM

South Carolina’s disturbing schools law that lets police arrest students who talk back to teachers or otherwise ‘act in an obnoxious manner’ could be repealed. A House committee votes Tuesday on a bill to limit the law to adults.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to The Sun News

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the editor: I didn’t know I was an environmental zealot until I read Sen. Goldfinch’s op-ed

December 22, 2017 04:34 PM

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the editor: Use Lake Busbee for recreation

December 15, 2017 10:53 AM

Letters to the Editor

Seniors want to keep rubber bridge

December 08, 2017 03:36 PM

Letters to the Editor

Opioid crisis is killing us — we need solutions

December 08, 2017 03:12 PM

Letters to the Editor

Those trying to change Myrtle Beach for the better will be attacked

October 14, 2017 10:45 AM

Letters to the Editor

S.C. Autism Society ready to help Myrtle Beach mother

October 14, 2017 10:44 AM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Myrtle Beach Sun News App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
Advertising
  • Place a Classified
  • Advertise
  • Rates
  • Contests & Promotions
  • Local Deals
Copyright
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story