Please help me understand. My ignorance and naivety must be blinding me to the obvious. I simply must be just lazy in my thinking.
I know I always just boil issues down to their essence and go with that. For instance, forty or so years ago, I realized, to myself, God is Love. Period. End of book. Thank you, I’ll take it from here. Thirty or so years ago I knew I Loved my wife. No ifs, ands, or her nice butt. Period. We’ll take it from here.
I must be lazy. I don’t look anything up on the internet or read books on the subjects. I don’t study opinion or go to school to learn more about it. Just regular thinking about it to myself. Kind of an odd way to learn maybe, and causes me to doubt sometimes. “Maybe I just don’t know. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe I’m not really happy.”
My “boil down” trait has me again. Eight years or so ago, I boiled America down to her essence – her Founding Principle. And went with that. I, again, didn’t look anything up, didn’t read Founding Father’s books. Didn’t take any courses again. Just regular thinking about it.
I believe I was lucky. I was raised in a family where prejudice was not acceptable behavior. So the essence of “all men are created equal” had a fighting chance in my heart.
So I’ve just been going with that. Just regular thinking about what, I believe, that Founding Principle is supposed to mean. What our Founders hoped to accomplish with that one sentence. That very first sentence in our very first document.
I believed I saw the genius in it. I thought I understood. This is a concept of universal proportions. I thought it was the most important sentence in the history of mankind.
I thought this will always be the moral highground – around the globe. Acknowledging Human Rights for every individual as an equal is absolutely brilliant. It instills dignity, self-respect, personal responsibility, introspect.
I thought it forces us to gauge a person by their character – not by their exterior, maybe even leaving the “gauging” to the more wise altogether.
I thought this Individual Liberty filled me with accountability, the pride, the shame, mine alone. All of us, individually, a minority.
I thought that meant you cannot group me with other Brown-eyes, assuming I am like all other Brown-eyes. I am me and only me. I thought that was the Individual Liberty acknowledged by our Founding Principle.
I thought this Founding Principle meant you cannot group all Muslims, you cannot group all Mexicans. That taking away a person’s Individual Liberty was truly un-American.
I thought this Founding Principle’s main goal was to free us from prejudice, for ourselves and all others. Without that baggage, without those shackles, and with that freedom, American exceptionalism was born. We can all contribute. We all matter. We – the people – all of us important. The brain pool of everybody to draw from.
I thought a principle was something you lived by. That it’s not a principle if you throw it away whenever you’re afraid. That America was beautiful because of our Founding Principle. That I loved my country because of this Founding Principle – not despite it.
I thought we were meant to lead the world, as the best leaders do, by example. That by standing on our Founding Principle – by co-existing, we prove that a nation can be truly strong, truly united, full of diversity and new concepts. I thought we were meant to teach the world the global peace and security offered by the power of our Founding Principle.
But this is just me – regular thinking about it. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe that’s not really America. Maybe our Founding Principle isn’t that important.
I just don’t understand. I thought it was.