Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Strawberry Moon<\/p>\n
The 4th of July.\u00a0 A time to think about our country, our home, our sea to shining sea.\u00a0 Are we in decline?\u00a0 This chestnut has begun hitting the op ed pages again.\u00a0 I don’t know, they don’t know.\u00a0 Only history will tell us.\u00a0 Does it matter?\u00a0 Not to me.\u00a0 We’ll still be Americans, just like the British are still British in spite of the collapse of the empire on which the sun never sat.<\/p>\n
Are there major problems within our body politic?\u00a0 Oh, my, yes.\u00a0 Does this make our time different from any other time?\u00a0 Emphatically, no.<\/p>\n
Here’s an example from a Frederick Douglass speech quoted in the Star-Tribune today:<\/p>\n
“Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!”<\/p>\n
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.<\/p>\n
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is “American Slavery.””<\/p>\n
Does this harmony of misery make us any less accountable for the unemployed, the dying lakes and rivers, the immigrants who would live among us and share this land?\u00a0\u00a0 Emphatically, no.<\/p>\n
Whether in decline or doggedly ascending the hill to that Bright Shining City so beloved of our forefathers, we must attend the great American ideals of liberty and equality, the twin conceptual mounts on which both our past and our future rest.<\/p>\n
And not these only.\u00a0 We now have before us the Great Work, the demanding and joyful task of creating a human presence on this planet that is benign, not malignant.<\/p>\n
Here are the things make me believe we will continue to rise to these challenges no matter our relative status in the world:\u00a0 we ended slavery.\u00a0 we fought and defeated fascism.\u00a0 we looked at old age poverty and created social security.\u00a0 we have a statue at what used to be the main entry point for immigrants; it is a statue of liberty and one which says to the world, give us your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.\u00a0 we have brilliant scientists, great laboratories and universities, students even at this moment learning to be the future leaders that we need.\u00a0 we have poets, movie makers, authors, critics, musicians, painters and sculptors all ready to help us see what we do not see.\u00a0 we have neighborhood after neighborhood of people who want only a chance, the same chance many of our ancestors have already had.\u00a0 we are a people who have won great victories for humanity.\u00a0 we are a land unparalleled in its ruggedness, its beauty, its flora and fauna, rivers and streams, lakes and forests.<\/p>\n
All of these things make me happy and hopeful on this 4th of July.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Strawberry Moon The 4th of July.\u00a0 A time to think about our country, our home, our sea to shining sea.\u00a0 Are we in decline?\u00a0 This chestnut has begun hitting the op ed pages again.\u00a0 I don’t know, they don’t know.\u00a0 Only history will tell us.\u00a0 Does it matter?\u00a0 Not to me.\u00a0 We’ll still … Continue reading The 4th<\/span>