Even With Our Flaws, We Have Much To Cherish

Each of the four towns that are at the center of this work have events or shrines honoring those who lost their lives in service of our country.

The rows of crosses set up each Memorial Day on Edgefield’s town square to honor its soldiers who didn’t return. The flags placed on the grave markers of veterans buried in the Ajo cemetery. The extensive shrine honoring Superior’s war dead that takes up the stage in one of the town’s few restaurants. The war memorials in Concord’s town square that serve as a backdrop for its biggest event of the year, Patriot’s Day.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the panel of participants all hold the same view of our history. Some conjure up the War for Independence and World War II, combining as they did leadership, heroism and sacrifice, some of our finest moments as a country.

Others think of slavery, segregation, and ongoing racism, that indelibly leave them with a different perspective. They can’t overlook the past – or the present. The blacks of Edgefield, S.C., and the Hispanics and Native Americans of Ajo, AZ, repeatedly expressed their distress at a growing revival of racist acts and remarks.  Asian-Americans have since raised their own alarms.

Therein lies the tradeoff imbedded in this principle. We can sing the praises that are pleasing to some but we also have to be willing to face up to the pain experienced by others.

Introduction to this project

Use of uncommon methods

Based on four very different locales

“Even With Our Flaws, We Have Much to Cherish” is the second of “10 principles to unite America” that look both to the past and to the future, reminding us of what we hold dear as Americans and at the same time challenging us to do better. They stand out as common purpose for our nation.

Diana in Concord: People here are very respectful of the flag and military. Concord is also a town where people are speaking up, loud and clear.

The tension of course burst into the open with the death of George Floyd. Large numbers of protestors, of all colors, took to the streets in support of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. A few took it upon themselves to topple the statutes of important historical figures.  In more orderly fashion, authorities subsequently removed additional monuments and changed the names of certain buildings.   With the designation in 2021 of Juneteenth as a national holiday commemorating the end of slavery 156 years earlier, blacks won belated recognition for a historic moment that has long been celebrated in their own communities.

But the debate goes on over how to fairly portray our past.  The only way we can reconcile the competing views is to acknowledge both the stains and the glory, so that we as a nation learn from the one while still taking justifiable pride in the other.

This is a nation that overcame gut punches at Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center, put a man on the moon and a rover on Mars, invented the light bulb and the iPhone, a vaccine for polio and a pacemaker for the heart, the moving assembly line for factories and the network protocols that led to the Internet.

Tom in Edgefield:  There are differences but overall I still think this is the greatest country in the world.

Pat in Superior: In spite of all of our differences, we have much to be thankful for.

The panel of participants agree we are forever beholden to those who shaped this nation, those who fought and died for the nation, those who built the nation through fortitude and innovation. Even with our flaws, they say, we have much to cherish.

Greg in Edgefield: Growing up in America, given a chance to go out and make a living, raise a family, I don’t think you can beat that anywhere in the world.