By Msgr. Charles Fink
There are terrible injustices in our country. There are people in prison who should not be there and people on the street who should be in prison. But there is no country on earth where it is more likely to receive a fairer trial or where one has a better chance that an error will be corrected or an injustice undone.
There are glaring inequalities in our society. There are the very rich and the very poor, and there are people who need help and do not receive it. But there is no society on earth where anyone—regardless of race, religion, or ethnic background—has a better chance to get ahead and improve their lot.
There is too much corruption in our government, in business, and even in our churches. Bad, weak, and foolish people rise to high places and destroy trust in institutions. But there is no nation on earth where corruption is more likely to be exposed in all its ugliness in broad daylight, and then, if not eliminated entirely, at least improved.
There is much that is cheap, licentious, and obscene in our culture. But no culture on earth is more open to such a wide variety of expressions as ours; none is more creative; and no one in this land is obliged to participate in any cultural activity they consider offensive.
When our military personnel are sent abroad to wage wars, they sometimes kill innocent people, and their conduct has not always been exemplary. But no military establishment on the planet works harder to avoid civilian casualties, and none expends more energy and resources on humanitarian aid, by far.
Compared to Heaven, Utopia, or Shangri-La, ours is a terrible, wicked, and unfortunate country. Compared to any other nation on earth that has ever existed or currently exists, it is the best that human beings have managed to produce.
Criticism, if constructive, can be helpful, but often one gets the impression that critics of the United States, both at home and abroad, seriously believe that the world would be a better place if the United States ceased to exist as a nation. Or that if tomorrow the United States of America no longer existed, the very next day, week, or month—at most within a year—Heaven would descend upon the earth.
This is to ignore all of history, to be blind to the current state of the world, to be happily unaware of human nature, and to imagine that civilization can be torn down and rebuilt overnight.
Tearing down, perhaps. How easy it is to destroy. But to rebuild? When it comes to civilizations, that takes centuries and a great fortune, perhaps even the grace of God.
The naïve belief in a quick and easy “fundamental change” may be understandable and forgivable in the young, by which I mean children and adolescents. Among those of voting age, it spells disaster for our future.
How we have reached a state of affairs in which a large number of our population—many in their twenties and thirties, some elected officials in our local, state, and federal governments—can speak and act with utter contempt for our nation while looking approvingly at other nations where they would be silenced, or worse, for defending some of their opinions or openly living their alternative lifestyles, is beyond comprehension.
This lends credibility to the suggestion that a kind of “mental virus” has afflicted our citizenry, rendering many of them incapable of rational thought or contact with reality.
None of this is to say that the United States is the New Jerusalem prophesied in the Bible. It is not. But it remains the country to which more people from more nations come, or wish to come, than to any other nation on earth.
Why is that? And why do so few critics of the United States, including those who always threaten to leave the country whenever an election does not turn out as they wish, actually leave? Because talking like that is cheap, childish, and rude.
If people want something better than the U.S. as it currently exists, there are many ways to work toward that goal, but badmouthing is not one of them. Nor is electing those who support ideas—such as communism—that have been tried and have failed, every single time, throughout history.
For 250 years, the United States has survived as a great and unique experiment in freedom and representative government. On more than one occasion its existence has seemed to hang by a thread. This may be another of those occasions, because what is taken for granted can well be taken away from us.
What we criticize and tear down incessantly may, like a depressed person with a miserable self-image, give up the ghost. And to be replaced by what?
A society of bitter, hateful, and envious souls who, living in a land of unprecedented prosperity and opportunity, withhold gratitude for blessings, admiration for achievements, and the humility to grant to the imperfect of the past the compassion and understanding that they, the critics, expect for themselves, as their due?
May God deliver us from such a fate. May God bless the U.S. on its 250th anniversary.
About the author:
Msgr. Charles Fink has been a priest for 50 years in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. He is a former pastor and seminary spiritual director, and lives retired from administrative duties at Notre Dame Parish in New Hyde Park, New York.