The Content of Our Character

I walked down to the National Mall today. All along the way the streets were quiet, still, as if a set for some movie about the last man on earth. The closer I got to the mall the more people appeared until, on the mall, it was a sea of humanity. To say this day was historic is to understate what this day really was. It was transcendent. It was astonishing. It was, in the true sense of the word, awesome - inspiring a sense of awe, of almost shocked silence, of reverence. Everywhere I went people were smiling and laughing and seeming so at ease, so relaxed. Our new president is official. He has sworn the oath, given his speech, made the parade and hangs up his scarf in the White House.

I have always been proud about being American. Even in our darkest periods, when our actions strayed so very far from our ideals, I kept my pride. My pride, my patriotism is not of the jingoistic variety. I do not believe in the phrase my country right or wrong or put much faith in the symbols. I believe and put my faith in the ideals of my country. These ideals, formulated 232 years ago, by a flawed but idealist group of men, codified into a Bill of Rights, and made into laws that help us live the way we should, are what has made us so very different from other democracies. Martin Luther King, Jr. called it a promissory note and demanded that it be paid. Today was a big step in regards to that payment.

 

I remember teaching English in an Eastern bloc country many years ago, just after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It was around the time of the first democratic elections in this country. They had lived under a communist dictatorship for almost 75 years. I remember the young people I was teaching telling me how nothing would change, that their vote did not matter, that their leaders would do as they wish and the people would follow like sheep. These were their words. They had no faith because there was nothing to base their faith on. Their country had never known honest elections. I tried to explain to them how democracy works and how they must believe that they could make a difference but it was useless. In a country so long used to being without the basic freedoms that we enjoy the idea that one person can change things doesn't go very far. Barak Obamas have no chance in such a place.

You see, this is what I love about the United States, that every so often, and sometimes when the light seems most dim, we make good on the promise of the ideas that formed our country. Every child knows the lines from King's I Have a Dream speech, the one that demands "judge me by the content of my character, not the color of my skin."  Today we saw a man who was given that very fundamental right sworn in as President of the United States. By living up to King's demand we also showed the content of our character as a nation. In such moments we show the rest of the world, in the best ways possible, and in ways so much better than we have tried to show these last eight years, how our country can live up to its ideals and deliver on its promises. We show what is best in ourselves. We demonstrate democracy.