With a hat tip to Spencer Ackerman for flagging the video (and accompanying sentiment), scenes like this symbolize what America stands for:
Watch as LA County rescue workers pull a victim from the rubble; the crowd erupts with spontaneous applause and chants of U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
I worry that there’s a strain within progressive America that doubts our country’s place in the world. I worry that America’s actions over the last decade have irreparably damaged progressives’ image of America as a great nation that was conceived to do great things.
To be sure, the Iraq war has triggered worthy reflection on that point. But my uber-fear is that with President Obama’s decision to adopt a new strategy in Afghanistan, progressives’ degraded concept of America has been legitimized now that one of their own has allegedly–if falsely in my opinion–“followed in Bush’s footsteps.”
Not to trivialize the point by being colloquial, but with issues like Iraq, it is unfortunately and tragically true that America screws up sometimes, and royally so (and Massachusetts, don’t think I’m just looking at that ranch in Crawford). Let’s remember that though even gross misjudgments in policy may raise questions about what America is, the worst errors are ultimately set right. America will remain a great place that does wonderful and selfless acts of kindness. It does so for two reasons–because it can and because that what it was meant to do.
