America’s great despite its flaws

Re "Unfortunately, America is not ‘better than this’" column by Leonard Pitts Jr.

America, Pitts writes, is a place where you can get thrown off an airplane because of your religion. Some people's votes are only counted from time to time, apparently, and only "some people's votes" are always counted. The courts and police defer to "these people," and in fact life "is, and always has been, a conspiracy in their favor." And the list goes on and on.

"Bigotry," declares Pitts, is every bit as American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.

Shame on us Americans, notes Pitts. We confuse America the "ideal" with America "the actual" and thereby give ourselves "credit that we do not deserve." We have - some of us, at least -- committed the apparently unpardonable sin of drawing a moral equivalence between the "Nazis" of Charlottesville, and those that would oppose them.

As I read Pitts' mindless polemic, I first thought of all the silver-haired grandmothers I’d seen or heard subjected to full body frisks and pat-downs by a TSA where security seems to take a back seat to political correctness. Then I wondered, did the thought ever occur to Pitts that it was America -- America the ideal and America very much the actual - that sent tens of thousands of her sons to die on the beaches and in the forests of Europe to defeat the real, actual Nazis -- not the ones who dressed up and marched around Charlottesville one Saturday, but the real Nazis, the ones who killed 12 million Jews and very nearly came to dominate the entire world, and would have but for our intervention?

And while we are on the subject of actual American intervention, has it ever occurred to Pitts that the United States has preserved freedom and democracy in the world not once, not twice, but at least three times by any reasonable count?

Has it occurred to Pitts that, had he written such invective about the Dear Leader's homeland of North Korea, as a North Korean "journalist," he'd be out of a job, in jail, or maybe even dead?

If Pitts really hates America as much as his shameful rhetoric suggests, why doesn’t he just leave? Perhaps there is a "better" nation out there somewhere, perhaps one more in keeping with his high moral standards?

Where do you suppose that he would go?

Pitts is certainly right about one thing. America is not perfect. That, in fact, is a part of the American experience that we all share. But we are in the struggle together, and we all yearn to be free, to exercise that freedom which our God has endowed within us. That is the beautiful struggle that unites us with a bond stronger than that which divides us. That's the beautiful part that makes this great nation our home. It is a home we should all love and cherish.

This story was originally published September 18, 2017 at 9:48 AM with the headline "America’s great despite its flaws."