So often we want to go back to "the good old days." Who can blame us? There was genuine comfort in grandma's fried chicken, naive bliss in the innocent games of seven year olds, sincere delight in remembering family vacations spent arguing with your brother in the back seat about where exactly his side of the car stops and your's begins, shear pleasure in the wonder of your first ice cream sandwich, and carefree confidence in knowing your parents had the answers to everything. Who doesn't long to return to those days when the weight of today bears down? Few if any I surely suppose.
Is it any wonder America longs to return to better days? Can she be blamed for yearning after a time when things made sense, when people were, no not perfect, but not so proud of their imperfections, failures and downfalls as to parade them for all to see? Of course she cannot. In fact, if you listen close, you can hear the quite plop of liberty's tears as they fall one by one on the dying ideas that gave her life 235 years ago; trusted, proven ideas like personal responsibility, thrift, self-reliance not government handouts, living as we can, not as we demand, a call to uniqueness and mankind's greatest hope.
Jimmy Stewart's film "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" (1939) may seem corny compared to Oliver Stone's, "Nixon" (1995). Yet, whether we acknowledge it or not, Stewart's three quarters of a century old corny description of what America can be, is exactly what we pine for today. Unfortunately, today we seem only able to woefully pine away for days past, rather than rally ourselves in Mr. Smith fashion. For in our twenty-first century self-congratulating sophistication, we have lost sight of what drove Mr. Smith's rousing passion on the floors of Congress. Indeed, despite protests to the contrary from many circles now, he, not us, was and would still be today, the true sophisticate. For his appeal to the higher angels in his fellow Congressmen was neither naive nor something to be dismissed as simplistic and out of touch with today's reality. Rather it revealed Mr. Smith's deep, healthy understanding of human nature, his clear, healthy ability to read between the lines and his firm, healthy grip on the notion that America is first and foremost an idea that requires and deserves our never ending, unapologetic defense.
But Americans have grown fearful of, perhaps embarrassed by Smith-like love of country and exuberant patriotism. Why? For decades now, we have been bludgeoned by criticisms of all kinds, and never ending demands we apologize for our past mistakes of omission and commission, as if we are the only people in history to have erred. While recognizing and righting genuine wrongs is never wrong, our apologies have turned to pathological groveling and our current, neurotic need to apologize over and over again for making the very same mistakes every nation, land and peoples throughout human history have made (and continue to make without apology) reveals that we have fully lost contact with the clarity of Mr. Smith's world. No wonder we are such a nostalgic people in 2011. Were mistakes made? Absolutely. Was slavery wrong? Absolutely. Will more mistakes be made? Absolutely. But they were and will be made by people, not America.
Here too, we see the sophistication and wisdom of Mr. Smith. His pride in America was firm and lasting, just as ours still can be today, not because he believed Americans were perfect by virtue of citizenship. Not at all. His pride, his over the top patriotism came from knowing the IDEA we call America has never failed anyone. The IDEA began the debate about slavery in America at the Constitutional Convention in 1789, not the delegates in attendance. The IDEA spurred Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the IDEA settled the issue at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865, not soldiers in blue and gray. And as the last 150 years have past it is the IDEA that is America, not self-interested citizens with something to gain or lose, that has compelled us to face, as no other nation has, each new herculean task that comes with proudly calling ourselves Americans. And despite all the criticism, it is the IDEA that continues to compel the poor, the oppressed and the hopeless toward our shores.
Mr. Smith read between the lines. He knew ideas, if not people, can be perfect. Therefore, he believed in the pure virtue of one particular idea, America. And despite his imperfections, in 1939 Jimmy Stewart held that virtue high in a movie so all could see. And despite our imperfections, we, you too, can today be like his Mr. Smith, standing high on a hill, proudly shining the light that is America on all the world.
