On the American dream
January 2025
Ordinarily I like to use the occasion of the New Year to write something hopeful about a fresh start. I don’t make resolutions, exactly, but I do like to pause and ponder.
This year, I don’t have any lofty expectations. Personally, my goal is to avoid getting completely jaded by what’s happening in the news. I want to hold onto certain values.
Temperance. Personal character. Human dignity. Agape love.
These are not useless artifacts. I reject the dominant ethos that says nothing is sacred so long as it can be used as a tool to gain money or fame or influence.
Virtues are still virtues in 2025.
In terms of American society, things don't feel so fresh this year. Instead of looking forward to a blank canvas, the country is being reminded of what it’s like when the world’s greatest troll is at the center of public life.
This is no longer about making a comparison between two options, as we did in 2024. The Democrats lost the presidency, and they probably deserved to lose it. The decision has been made. Now we live with the reality of the decision.
Mitt Romney, who takes seriously the responsibilities of public service, sounded a bittersweet note in his farewell speech from the floor of the Senate:
Now, it is customary to end remarks like these with the words: “God Bless America.” That has never seemed jarring or out of place to me because Americans have always been fundamentally good. From our earliest days, we have rushed to help neighbors in need, as De Tocqueville noted. We welcomed the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We have respected different faiths, as our first president confirmed to Muslims and Jews.
“United We Stand” is a fitting refrain. As the leader of the free world, our sons and daughters have fought time and again for liberty, and our treasure has buoyed freedom fighters around the globe. Like all people, we have made mistakes, some grievous, but often our mistakes have come from misguided understanding. God has blessed America because America is good.
There are some today who would tear at our unity, who would replace love with hate, who deride our foundation of virtue, or who debase the values upon which the blessings of heaven depend.
Now, I have been in public service for 25 years. I have learned that politics alone cannot measure up to the challenges we face. A country’s character is a reflection not just of its elected officials but also of its people. I leave Washington to return to be one among them and hope to be a voice of unity and virtue. For it is only if the American people merit His benevolence that God will continue to bless America.
I’m not going to write a theological exegesis of his statement, but I think it reflects an internal struggle with the idea that the victors of 2025 are people who think public virtue is for suckers and losers.
This is an inversion of what the Founders had in mind. The triumph of moral nihilism in American society will reverberate for years to come.
If we lose touch with all sense of public virtue, if trollish vitriol becomes more valuable than statesmanship, if reality becomes background noise to the narrative wars, what will become of this country?
I have significantly cut back my time looking at Twitter/X, but the other day I was amused scrolling through immigration commentary to see some MAGA nationalists proclaiming their views to be infallible based on how far back they could trace their family lineage in the United States. As if your ancestral history makes you more American than someone whose parents arrived from a different country.
John McCain said it best in his departing words to the nation: We are a nation of ideals, not blood and soil.
The nation has strived to uphold the ideals of freedom and self-determination.
Immigrants often embody these ideals vividly. Some people have made a conscious decision that they want to become Americans. They have uprooted themselves in order to seek a better life in a new land.
We are also a nation of laws, which is why the extreme nationalists say they want to deport anyone and everyone who doesn’t have legal documentation.
But as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the law is an imperfect instrument.
Yes, the United States relies upon laws for our stability. Yes, this also applies to our southern border.
But we should recognize the humanity of the situation. If it is more humane to allow families to stay together, if it is more just to give Dreamers a path to citizenship, then we can do these things without abandoning “the rule of law.”
The story of the United States is complex. Different movements have tried to define and redefine what the nation stands for. The benefit of an open and free society is that we get a chance to self-correct when things go wrong.
John McCain again, from the same farewell statement:
We are 325 million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that, and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country, we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.
Despite my sense of foreboding, I hope that he is right — by the grace of God.
As the lessons in my life compile I have come to the realization that the world political movements have moved more quickly in the past 10-15 years than they did in the 50 years prior. I liken that to social media and it’s reach worldwide. As a teenager in the 1960-70’s I saw what I thought was a shift in misogyny, homophobia, racism, and religious freedom move to a more gracious place in American thought and practice. The pendulum has swung and so quickly. Maybe I’m naive enough to believe policy on economics and nationalistic tendencies would not have affected our national soul to the point where we now blame the opposite political party and women for the destruction in the Los Angeles fires. I am appalled and tremendously saddened by the response from our president elect for his and others remarks. My heart and love goes to those poor people. Remember love and kindness is never wrong. It’s what gets us through.
Amen. MAGA, a convicted felon, will be the first President of the United States with Dictatorial power. It is quite possible our 237 year-long Protestant work ethic based liberal democratic republic experiment in governance will be replaced by a Dictatorship. If that happens we will have done it to ourselves.