"Oh my country," John Adams once wrote of America. "How I mourn over thy follies and Vices, thine ignorance and imbecility, Thy contempt of Wisdom and Virtue and overweening Admiration of fools and Knaves!"
Adams, like all of us, including those who say they "hate" America, was angry and frustrated at his fellow Americans because they weren't conforming to his singular vision of what the United States should be.
All of us have an idea of the "perfect" America. Some see an America without billionaires and millionaires, where everyone works, everyone eats, everyone receives the healthcare they need, and everyone has a job that's emotionally and spiritually satisfying.
Some see an America of "perfect freedom" where everyone can say, do, and act as they please, as long as, in doing so, they don't infringe on the right of their neighbor to say, do, or act as they choose.
There are 340 million variations of those visions of America. Each and every one of them is absolutely valid within the context of the founders' original concept of freedom and liberty. Who are you to say otherwise?
You're an American, that's who. And that's what makes America an exceptional country, unlike any other. It makes Americans an exceptional people, unlike any other people on Earth.
Indeed, much of our political combat would disappear if everyone believed the person on the other side of the argument had the best interests of the United States at heart. Instead, our mutual hatred and distrust of each other's basic motivations are leading us down a path to total destruction.
It's a quaint, old-fashioned notion to believe in the good intentions of the other side. The thing is, our disagreements weren't any less fervent 250 years ago than they are today. They weren't less serious or less passionate than they were at our founding.
Can you imagine having to argue with someone who holds a pro-slavery (or anti-slavery) point of view? Arguments about immigration were no less raucous then. There was even a political party based on opposition to immigration (the "Know-Nothing" Party).
Hating the opposition is incompatible with the notion of loving America. That's not the way the country was set up. It's not the way that the idea of America is supposed to work. And the bitter, divisive feelings that most of us harbor for the opposition have been especially ruinous in causing younger Americans to hate their country.
Younger Americans are less patriotic than ever before. Two new polls illustrate this: Only 31 percent of youngsters aged 18 to 29 are "extremely" or "very" proud to be an American, per a new NBC poll, compared with 75 percent of those 65 and older. And a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute reports that only 34 percent of that same younger age group are proud to be an American, whereas 66 percent of those 65 and older, 59 percent of Americans aged 50 to 64, and 43 percent aged 30 to 49 feel proud to be FROM THE GREATEST COUNTRY THAT EVER WAS.
Hating America for her imperfections is idiotic. Our failings as a nation are no different than any other nation on Earth. Racism? Go to a soccer match in Italy or Spain, and American audiences would be shocked at the overt racism shown to black players. And let's not even begin a discussion about America's sexism while nations like Iran beat women for uncovering their heads and countries like Somalia perform crude surgeries on little girls to prevent them from enjoying sex.
Two and a half centuries ago, John Adams vented his own frustrations with the follies of his country, yet he never stopped loving it or building it. He understood what too many younger Americans are forgetting today: that loving your country means fighting for its ideals, not abandoning them the moment reality falls short of perfection.
The fundamental difference between America and the rest of the world isn't that we are free from the human flaws of prejudice, tribalism, or discord. Our system was explicitly designed with the architecture to confront and correct them. When we lose sight of that — when we trade a desire for a better union for a bitter, blanket hatred of the nation itself — we surrender the very tools that make progress possible.
Hating America for being imperfect misses the entire point of the American experiment: it is not a finished masterpiece, but an ongoing crucible of liberty, uniquely structured to allow us the freedom to fix what is broken.
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