Feel Proud

Martin Devon — a blogger who deserves more readers — goes on a longish rant, but it’s worth your time.

I too often forget, as Martin reminds us, that all of us here in America stand on the shoulders of giants.

I don’t know who I would have become had I been born under in a different place or time. But at the risk of sounding like “W,” I think I’ve figured out who us and them are. The reason that most people in our society grow up to be decent, hardworking, loving people is because we stand on the shoulders of the giants who said this:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Simple, corny, obvious. But wonderful. Alone among nations, America is an idea, not an ethnicity. The truth is, that in this war that we fight, we are not intrinsically any better than our enemy. But our ideas are better. Our values are better. Our giants are taller.

Read that last line again. “Our giants are taller.”

I wish I’d written that.