Michael Smerconish: American Exceptionalism

Source:Michael Smerconish talking about when America was the greatest. 

"When was America greatest?" 

From Michael Smerconish

"When Donald Trump says we need to ‘make America great again,” most Republicans think about the 1950s.

According to Andrew Van Dam at The Washington Post, Republicans believe that the 1950s was the happiest, safest, most communitarian, and moral society of the last 100 years. They think that the 1950s was the decade with the most reliable news reporting, although they believe that the 1980s was the decade with the least political divisions.

Democrats, as you might guess, answered the questions differently... 

From Current

Just to go on the record on this question; even with America being addicted to new technology and always feeling the need to be seen as up to date on new technology, especially as it relates to their smartphones and feel the need to be seen holding a coffee up, especially while they're on the phone or staring at their phone and this country's addiction to celebrity culture, (perhaps all these issues can be blamed on Millennial's) there's no other time that I rather be living in America and no other country in the world that I rather live in, than America. And I'll get into why. 

But before I get into why I think right now is the best time to be an American and living in America, I want to get into what this whole MAGA (or "Make America Great Again") movement is really about. 

There was a time when the Republican Party was stereotyped as the American patriots, the patriotic party, the people who love America. And you still have plenty of Republicans like that.  But most of them are now Never-Trump'ers. 

People like: 

S.E. Cupp, 

former U.S. Representative's Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Charlie Dent, Ken Buck, and many others who are either still in the House, (because perhaps they're glutens for political punishment) 

as well as current U.S. Senator Mitt Romney 

former Republican governor's John Kasich and Larry Hogan. 

But today thanks to Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, you now have 60-70% (depending on which polls you look at) of the Republican Party now saying that America is no longer a great country. And that they need to: "take back America and give it back to the real Americans" because it's now a country that they no longer recognize. And if you go with Andrew Van Dam article, it's the 1950s and even the 1940s as the two decades they point to as saying that was when America was a great country. 

But if you are a woman of any ethnic or racial background, or any ethnic or racial minority, if you are gay today, would you rather be living in the 1950s or 40s in America, than right now, where you not just have the same constitutional rights and protections as Anglo-Saxon men and other Caucasians, but where those constitutional rights by an large (so system is perfect) are enforced equally under law as the Anglo-Saxons, especially Anglo-Saxon men?

Yes, The American President is a fictional film, but there are times in our lives when even Hollywood can get it right and avoid screwing it up. And to quote President Andrew Shepard (played by Michael Douglas) in that great speech that he gave in that film: 

"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours." You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms.

Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free." 

From American Rhetoric

I know this going to sound partisan, but what actually makes America great right now and has always made America a great country, at least since the 1960s, is what MAGA hates about our great country. 

America is that one country in the world where everyone can make it in America, regardless of our race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, culture, region, etc. If you have the talent and the skills, the character, you'll make it in America. 

No other country in the world has created more freedom, more opportunity, for more people, as well as different kinds of people, as the United States of America. And because of all our advanced freedom for more Americans and people today, no better time to be an American than right here and right now. 

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