It’s a system that was rigorously developed by our Founding Fathers. They went through the system to create it.
Founding isn’t some patriotic painting. Was forged in debate halls. Anger, frustration, impatience, maddening details. Meticulous pouring over details. Arguing, yelling, cursing.
But they were up to the task.
It wasn’t about oversimplistic, dogmatic ideologies. Not about capitalism or socialism. Not about liberalism or conservatism.
Is about a system. The American SYSTEM.
A system that recognizes the world is a complex place. And that things change.
They created a system to analyze and address those complexities. A system able to adapt to our changing world.
Is about finding balance and best path forward. Not intellectual laziness and adhering to some mindless, oversimplistic ideology or slogan.
It’s a good system.
And the system isn’t what’s wrong here.
What’s wrong is the operators of that system have allowed the system to get mucked up. To get polluted.
Those operators are us. We the people.
We have forsaken our heritage.
We treat the flag like a Nike symbol – sticking on our trucks and hats like a brand … rather than a symbol of principles we should cherish and adhere to, but don’t.
We stick words like “Freedom” and “1776” on our T-shirt as performance patriotism, designed to make us feel good and give us a sense of belonging(???), while we neglect the very tools of the system designed to promote and protect those ideals.
We get caught up in labels and slogans like liberalism and conservatism, socialism, capitalism. Simple terms that have little practical use in a complex world.
Meanwhile we have lost touch with the one term that really means something: America.
We need to return to that system that shuns simplistic labels. We need to devote ourselves to the methods of being an American. The system that painstakingly and often frustratingly dives into details and debates and, yes, compromises.
That is the system that makes us who we are. And that is the one term we should all be most devoted to.
Americanism.