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Five Sacred Words That Americans Must Remember

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Too many of us have forgotten all the valuable things we share in common: that we are — all of us — American; that nearly all of us came from “somewhere else”; that (for those of us who arrived unchained) our ancestors were much poorer than we are; that we were often fleeing bigotry and economic oppression; and that our ancestors’ respective countries were usually embroiled in civil unrest or authoritarianism.

Those countries experienced such unrest because, unlike the nascent United States, they did not value the five imperfectly realized but perfectly sacred words that Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”

One of the best things about America is that we have over time tried to approach that ideal and to treat every single human soul as a being worthy of love, respect, dignity, and the *chance* to at least (Jefferson again) “pursue happiness.” While I (and others) may have been singled out at times for our ancestry (for me, after 9/11), we could trust that while such bullying might be an acceptable ideal on the playground, it was not the ideal of our Republic — that “all men are created equal.”

America’s ideal was and is great, and the establishment of this country and its proper functioning — even through a civil war — was not due only to mechanical innovations like “the separation of powers” or “checks and balances” but was instead due to our attempts to make the Declaration’s sacred ideal — “all men are created equal” — a reality.

Previously Published on Medium

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