The beautiful words that describe America

Katherine has an extraordinary post that spells out how the soaring idealism of the United States can be tethered by the concrete review of our failures. But unlike other folks, she doesn’t see this as a reason to give up on the beautiful words. Even when they seem to be co-opted by people whose actions make a mockery of their own rhetoric.

Those glittering abstract nouns aren’t sufficient, but they can be damn useful. They aren’t accurate descriptions of this country right now, and probably they never have been, but a lot of Americans are sincerely attached to them. And sometimes, when presented with a stark contradiction between the bedtime stories we learned about this country as children, and concrete effects of our actions, we will choose to make the bedtime story true rather than give it up entirely.

It’s not an easy thing to do, but it sometimes works. It’s worked a number of times in this country’s history.

It’s almost Independence Day. Go read something that will make you proud to be an American.

posted by Sra. Bibliotecaria ⋅ tagged america, language, politics

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