Bryce Maloney ‘26
Opinions Editor
What does America mean to you? What does it mean to anyone? I guarantee that there will be as many answers to this question as there are people in this vast and diverse nation. Some will tell you stories of immigrants making the treacherous journey across oceans in search of a better life and opportunity for themselves and their children, while others will tell you stories of ancestors forced against their will across the same ocean in search of a freedom which passed more distantly into the background. Some will tell you tales of heroic soldiers proudly bearing arms as they march in neat lines to raise our nation’s banners from sea to shining sea, and others will tell you stories of indigenous tribes who fought bravely to keep those same soldiers away from the land which their people have occupied since antiquity. The truth is, there is no piece of information that can answer the question “What is America?” in an entirely factual way.
America is more than a sovereign territory or political entity. It is, in every sense, a living, breathing, organism that changes and expands on itself. The America we know and live in today is entirely different from the one which the founding fathers created. If all goes well 200 years from now, it will be entirely different from the one we have today. I don’t mean to argue that our nation does not live up to the same principles and values upon which she was constructed, nor does it not carry the weight and burden of its past, but rather that our nation means more than anything that any of us can possibly quantify. The one plausible way in which we could possibly answer the question “What is America?” is by saying that our nation is, above all else, an idea. It is an idea that can be changed, expanded, rethought, and reinvigorated as time goes on. I think that this is a crucial part of our national identity, and is one that we have forgotten in recent years. Modern America seems to be in the middle of a decades-long search for purpose, a quest that has asked many important questions and raised a number of prudent issues– without having ever been able to truly answer any of them. We are so focused on trying to establish a label and imbed a singular identity on our people that we forget who we truly are. I think that we should accept the challenges we face at answering these existential questions, and approach the identity problem from a different angle. If we choose to look at our country as an idea more than anything else, we are more inclined to find that we understand more about ourselves and what we mean to this society than we have been able to in a while.
Former South Carolina Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley was recently asked “is America a racist country?” Like many people, she found the question hard to answer. She expressed that growing up as an Indian American in rural South Carolina, she absolutely experienced racism, but that she simultaneously found it hard to define America as singularly racist. I think such a blank-slated question is hard to answer in a society like ours, and places many people wary of breaching understanding the complexities of their society. I find it hard to say that America is both completely racist or completely non racist, and furthermore I reject the idea that a group of people, no matter how large, can singularly come to define what this country actually means. Because by definition, no singular human can live up to the idea for which this country was founded, and no idea nor ideology can come to represent us truly as a people. I believe in an America where no notion has ever truly bound us all together – except for one. I think that if we are to be bound to one idea, it is that the greatness of our nation is singularly defined by our people and our constant ability to reinvent ourselves. In simple terms, our nation is one that can both reflect honestly on its past, yet also need not be defined by it. The modern world has brought us so much closer together, but has somehow pulled us even further apart. There is a feeling that something is amiss in the United States, that somehow we have forgotten what the idea of America means at all. We are told, rather incorrectly, that flag waving and blind loyalty to our leadership is more definitive of true patriotism than those who question, object, and dismiss society as it appears to us. However, this line of thought leads people away, and rejects all attempts to bind this nation together. If we took time to look at America as it should be, and not as it is today, we could truly gain a better understanding of that most august of ideas. In short, it is an idea that produces new ideas and fosters different ways of thinking. It is one which gives every one of us their share of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: and the ability to use it as each of us see fit. You can wave your flag, glorify our leaders, sing the Star Spangled Banner, or not. You can send a man to the moon, defeat Polio, and liberate the world from facism, or not. You can believe in God, Allah, Buddha, or not. You can traverse vast deserts, climb rocky coastlines, freeze in arctic tundras, or not. You can eat a cheeseburger for every meal of every day of your life, or not. Nothing anyone says or does can ever simplify nor make concrete the meaning of this vast and diverse place… and that is exactly what I love about it. We are a country with millions of opinions, a multitude of backgrounds and thoughts which don’t always see eye to eye. However, when we debate and challenge one another, we are ensuring that the legacy of our ‘idea’ of a nation lives to see another day. I think that only in the essence of that unique set of moral quandaries, can we find the beautiful purpose of our country. In short, I think the late, great Anthony Bourdain said it best when he remarked that “one time looking down from a plane somewhere over Colorado, I noticed: there really are Purple Mountains, there really is a fruited plain. Once I began looking at my own country as I would a foreign land, it was easy to find lots to admire, be intrigued by, and to love.”
Copy Edited by Will Donahue ‘24
Photo courtesy of CNN
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