America: Rescue Nation

We once had a national unifying story, and we celebrated all Thanksgiving. It was an exotic confession. Americans are a people who escaped oppression, overcome cruelty, and built a promised land. The Puritans brought this confession with them. Each wave of immigrants saw himself in that confession. Even the civil rights movement embraced this confession.

But we must admit that many people in America today are not related to confession. A confession to the unity of the American people. But if they're under the age of 45, you've probably learned an American story that realistically highlights the divide between the settlers and the natives, their founders and slaves, their bosses and workers, the whites and the colored people. It is hard for many today to believe in a promised land. It seems promised only for the few privileged ones, while leading to the marginalisation of the majority.

Modern fashion uratives are preaching divisions and disappointments. Multicultural, dominant narrativa in every school, say America is divided into different biological groups and each group's status is defined by the oppression it has experienced. The populist, dominant in electorates, says America is divided between ordinary and virtuous people and foolish and corrupt elites.

Today, we don't have a common national narrator, we don't have a way of interpreting for the different events that happen. Without a common confession, we don't even know what our national purpose is. We do not even have a set of goals and ideals.

We missed a new national narrator.

To identify someone is to go back to the strange features of our history. We are good to our enemies in wartime. After the revolution, we soon became friends with Britain. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson was human with our European enemies. After World War II, America in a Generically helped rebuild Germany and Japan.

Otherwise, hostilities lasted for centuries. Not here. Why? Because we have a national preference for new beginnings. Coming to this place, for many people, is a new beginning. We turn every new presidential administration, every new sports season, every graduation ceremony to a new beginning. It's said that Americans don't deal with arguments, they just leave them alone.

The report about America, then, can be interpreted as a series of salvations, injuries, and new beginnings of suffering. By the 18th century, divisions between the settlers had been partially closed. In the 19th century, divisions between free people and slaves were also partially closed. In its 20th, America partially closed the divisions between democracy and totalitarianism. At 21st, we are closing new beginnings still on arrival.

The grand sermon of salvation and reconciliation is President Lincoln's second inaugural speech.

It was a talk of extraordinary intellectual humility. None of us predicted this conflict, or his magnitude. All of us were meant for a lighter triumph.” None of us are fully under control. “ ”

It was a talk of great moral humility. The slavery, Lincoln said, was not a South institution, it was an American institution, which ran through a total of 250 years of common history. The scourge of war, which cleared this sin, fell both ways. Lincoln fought every sense of superiority the northern people gave themselves. He denied all thought that God is a tribal god. He put us all in the same category of ambition and fall.

The talk in question is a great talk of reconciliation. The words there are “ ” and “all”. All thoughts were anxiously directed toward an inevitable civil war. Every word feared what was coming, was trying to avoid... Both parties opposed the war. ”

Lincoln set the course of a two-way apology, not a superficial apology that held no burden, but the kind that contained all the stages of a proper rigorous apology: mercy, judgment, confidence, reconciliation, reconciliation and re-confidence.

He set the course for flexibility and political pragmatism. We cannot understand the course of events or God's will. Therefore, we cannot be sure of our notion of what is right, or regid in clinging to abstract principles or dogmatic ideology. Everything must be open to experimentation, flexibility and maneuvering.

The final prayer announces a new beginning: “ill-willed towards anyone, kindly to anyone, with the determination of the right to give us the opportunity to see right, let's try to finish the work we do, connect to the national wounds... to achieve peace among all nations. ”

In his speech Lincoln realistically accepted the divisions and disappointments that had plagued the nation. But he did not accept the inevitability of a divided house. He combined Christian salvation with multicultural love for diversity. With a brilliant blow, Lincoln cuts off the Christian policies of chauvinism and the white identity that we now see at the Evangelical right. He fills the heat of the moral vision we now see on the relative left. It shows how American partisanism always leads to universalism as specific features of our settlers' history and culture lead to a vision of a unity of all humanity. This is the confession we can join and live with.

D'oh!

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