Does it seem to anyone else that we have been going backwards?

When hundreds of terrified people flee violence, rape, and murder in their own country, it seems to me that the solution is to help make their country safer, not to turn our own country into a place where children are torn from their families—making my country into a scarier place than what people are struggling to escape does not sound like a viable solution. It makes us into the bad guys. I never wanted to be one of the bad guys.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

I have slept badly, eaten buttered popcorn (comfort food) because I am uncomfortable with the world, fearful of death, concerned for my country.

I know that America is not a perfect place, that we have done terrible things in our past. I willingly acknowledge and condemn our collusion and active violation of the rights and very lives of people indigenous to this land and to other lands. I do not need to list the abuses. We are a powerful nation and with power comes the potential for abuse.

But former abuses are not an excuse for future ones. It is not enough to say, as our current president has recently said, “You think our country’s so innocent?”

No. We have not always been innocent. But we have aspired to be great.

Failure to do the right thing in the past does not excuse our obligation to try to do better.

I used to insist my students memorize The Preamble. If you have ever seen the Constitution, it begins with “We the People” in enormous letters. The Preamble itself is specific and powerful as an outline of our goals as a nation.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The capitalizations and spelling are original.

And then there is the Statue of Liberty, which celebrated our centennial and spoke to the light of hope we offer to the rest of the world, and the poem, written by an American that is enscribed at the base:

The New Colossus by Emma Lazurus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Not to conquer but to raise the light of hope to all the world. That is our chosen destiny. Some will choose money over justice. Damned we are if that is our choice as a nation to choose profit over people. To institute brutality in response to brutality. To witness cruelty and respond with anything other than kindness—that would be a violation of our nation’s history and idealism.

We have a great deal to be proud of in our history, which is clearly flawed but always striving to be great, working to be good and just and fine toward all people in recognition of our shared humanity, in the rights of all people to seek life, liberty, and happiness.

This is my country, both imperfect and honorable. This is our principle of freedom and righteousness. May it yet prevail.