4 Reasons Why I Love Being an American*

by Kassandra Lamb

(*Note: by American, I mean resident of the U.S. Please don’t take offense, my Canadian and Central/South American friends, but “resident of the United States” is just too big a mouthful to say again and again.)

This year, as I contemplated what to write for yet another patriotic post for Independence Day, I was tempted to go light again, as we have sometimes done in the past for Memorial Day or the 4th of July, with recipes and nostalgia about childhood cookouts and fireworks. With all the ranting and ravings by politicians right now, it’s easy to think, “No, no, no, I don’t want to get involved in any of that heavy stuff.”

And I don’t, but I think that I do want to remind myself and others of just how great this country is. In many ways, it’s one of the best in the world.

So here are my 4 top reasons why I love being an American:

1. This country was founded by some pretty smart people.

We humans have a tendency toward short memories. And thus history repeats itself again and again, because we forget the lessons of the past, and sometimes even the recent past.

But our founding fathers got that this was a great hazard for our fledgling country. They wove into the very fabric of its foundation — in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — clauses that were designed to keep this new country they were forming from making the same mistakes the European monarchies had recently made.

Instead of designing a government that would stifle the populace in order to maintain control, they guaranteed certain “inalienable rights” to everyone in this country. That was a profound and rather novel concept at the time.

It might have taken a few generations for Americans to get it that everyone truly meant everyone (women, African-Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, LGBT folks, etc.), but when these groups got up the gumption to speak up against their exclusion from those inalienable rights, we had to admit (grudgingly sometimes) that they had a point.

2. This country was founded on good moral values.

While the Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee freedom of religion and separation of church and state, the founding fathers were God-fearing men. They strove to shape a society that was based on Judeo-Christian values, such as tolerance and compassion.

Again, we may have taken a couple of centuries to get anywhere close to fulfilling that vision, and we have a ways to go yet in certain areas, but we do strive toward these goals. Not all nations do, and not all societies even see tolerance as desirable.

3. Americans are survivors.

We come from gritty pioneer stock. Our ancestors braved the perils of a hostile ocean and an unknown land to start a new life. They had a variety of reasons for coming here, from escaping religious persecution to seeking a better life to being shipped here against their will as prisoners or slaves. But they survived a lot of hardship and struggled to carve out a life for themselves and their descendants.

That’s the genetic pool from which we’ve sprung.

So when something knocks us down, we get up, brush ourselves off and keep trucking. And when others are knocked down, we rally around with help and encouragement. I was never prouder to be an American than these past few weeks as this country supported the LGBT community after the horror in Orlando. Even most of those Americans who might not approve wholeheartedly of their lifestyle got it that it wasn’t okay for 49 people to go from happy dancing to dead in a matter of minutes. The whole country is still mourning their loss and praying for the fifty-some folks who were injured and the families of all of the above.

4. America grows over time.

We may do it in fits and starts and sometimes fight it tooth and nail, but we grow. We adjust. We move on. As I watch the evening news each night, I see a society that is struggling with letting go of the past, or what we perceive the past to have been, and at the same time, is struggling to keep up with a rapidly-changing world.

I’ve lived long enough to have experienced some of the good old days. Some of them were indeed good, and some not so much. Those are best left behind.

By the same token, we should not be too quick to toss out the old just because it is old (says the woman who recently gave up her flip phone and got her first smart phone). To paraphrase the saying from the 12-step programs, we should “keep what works and leave the rest.”

Our history as a country (and I’ve seen this personally for the last 6 decades) has been one of pendulum swings on a variety of issues – to the right, to the left, back and forth – and eventually we find the balance on each issue, often somewhere in the middle.

Personally, I have faith that the United States of America will continue to eventually find the balance. Because we are a great country!

Happy Birthday, America!!

(Please, no political rants in the comments.)

Note: Today’s the last day for Vinnie Hansen’s giveaway of 3 copies of her new release, Squeezed and Juiced, over on Goodreads! Check it out!!

Posted by Kassandra Lamb. Kassandra is a retired psychotherapist turned mystery writer. She is the author of the Kate Huntington psychological suspense series, set in her native Maryland, and a new series, the Marcia Banks and Buddy cozy mysteries, set in Central Florida.

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