When I put together my 9000 awesome words, I included a map of America, but I felt weird about it. My enthusiasm is more about the abstract idea of America than its current manifestation.
Nothing better illustrates my conflicting feelings about America than the story of Chester Smalkowski.
My synopsis:
His daughter refused to join her school basketball team in prayer, so they kicked her off the squad. After finding out that she refused because she is an atheist like her father, school officials made up lies about her to justify her removal from the team. Upset at about the events, Mr. Smalkowski went to speak to the school principal. The principal physically attacked Mr. Smalkowski, and then filed misdemeanor assault charges against him. He offered to remove the charges if they moved their family out of the state (Oklahoma), and when Smalkowski refused, he added felony assault to the charges. A string of defense lawyers refused to use atheism as part of the defense strategy, but finally the American Atheists got involved and found him a lawyer who was willing to talk about atheism in the heart of the Bible Belt. Eventually a jury found Smalkowski not-guilty.
Smalkowski's account of the ordeal is a must-read: Just Another Salem.
On the one hand you have a community full of people who blindly attack (physically, verbally, emotionally) anyone who challenges their beliefs. But on the other hand, the courts finally did the right thing in the criminal proceeding, and hopefully will in civil as well. I'm fairly surprised that they were able to find a jury of 12 people who were willing to consider the facts of the case without prejudice.
I love the idea of government by consent of the people, a government that serves to protect its citizens' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is inspiring to imagine a bunch of farmers banding together to overthrow a deeply entrenched and oppressive regime and form their own nation, adopting Enlightenment ideals. I also love the protection of freedom of speech and the separation of church and state.
But I don't see the USA as a country committed to any of those ideas any more. America is a mass of people with little respect for anything but their (mostly religious) belief systems. A teacher told Smalkowski's daughter "This is a Christian country and if you don't like it get out!" It seems to me that more American's would agree with that teacher than would agree with our Founding Father's ideals.
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