Why Do So Many Americans Hate America?
So many Americans hate America. Why? There’s so much to love. Besides, people sometimes die in the process of trying to get here, so they might have a chance to enjoy the freedom we take for granted every single day.
The hatred against America is often fostered by our schools and our media. It’s cool to bash America. And this America-bashing is taking a toll on society. We have a beleaguered presidency, like we’ve never seen before. Many young people hold up protest signs, “He’s not my president.” Some of them didn’t even vote.
Look at these recent headlines from the Drudge Report in mid-September:
- NFL HELL: LA Teams Massive Attendance Drop…
- Ratings UGLY…
- 8-year old football players take knee during national anthem
- Fury fuels modern political climate in USA…
- Anger about EVERYTHING…
- Anti-Trump Witch Compares Casting Hexes To Singing National Anthem, Saluting Flag…
What’s going on? Classes in college target white supremacy and routinely denounce America for its racist past. One would think that pre-modern America was on the level of Nazi Germany—which truly was a racist country, as they sought to create a Master Race and kill those they deemed unworthy of life.
On my mp3 player, I have some of the words of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech set to music. I hear it sometimes at the gym. And I look around me, and I see white people and black people working out, talking together, having fellowship—without even thinking about it. I think that aspect of MLK’s vision has greatly come to pass.
Meanwhile, I think there are others who seemed to have a vested interest in harping on America’s racist past and never letting it go. They would be out of a job if we were truly at the point that we judged people by the content of their character and not the color of their skins.
Lately, agitators are targeting statues of historical figures for destruction. I can understand those who are railing against anyone who in any way defended slavery. But our history is sometimes being grossly distorted by the American Taliban that is all set on tearing down historical statues from our past.
Recently, the American Taliban have even targeted Ben Franklin in Dallas. Ben Franklin? This founding father started one of the earliest anti-slavery societies in America.
America is more of an idea than a nationality. We are a proverbial melting pot of all sorts of nationalities.
Dr. Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, once told me in a television interview, that America is more of an idea than a nationality per se. He said, “We’re the only nation in the world that is a creedal nation. Every other nation in the world is tied to ethnicity. We’re not; we’re tied to ideas, to beliefs and those beliefs are embodied in the Declaration of Independence… that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Land continues, “So anybody can become an American in a way that you can’t become a Frenchman or become a German….That makes us unique in the world; and that creed is formed and shaped by the Puritans, by those who came here seeking religious freedom. As Martin Marty once said, we are a nation with the soul of a church.”
And Land added, “If you want to understand America, you have to go back to Massachusetts Bay, and you have to go back to Governor Winthrop; and we came here to be a shining city on a hill, the New Jerusalem, to light the way for the old world.”
America is far from perfect. That’s why the prayer in the hymn America the Beautiful is so appropriate: “America, America, God, mend thine every flaw.” Praying for that and working together for the common good far-exceeds America-loathing and working to destroy the nation from within.
[Originally posted 10/3/17]
