These days we seem to be caught up in a great debate as to whether we Americans are a great nation, or if we just used to be a great nation, and now need to try to get back to being a great nation.
It raises questions about what makes a nation a great nation? What makes a people a great people? And, in what period of our history have we been at our best as a nation and as a people? Is our greatness manifested primarily in our military might and our ability to sway world affairs? Is greatness demonstrated by our financial success and our comparative wealth? Or is greatness seen in our humanity, in our integrity as a people, in our faith, in our way of life which gives hope to people everywhere that a life of justice, of well-being, of understanding, and of mutual benefit for all is possible, even in our imperfect world?
Without doubt, not everyone will answer these questions in the same way. Not everyone sees greatness of a people in the same way. We do not even have the same ideas about respecting each other. Some may see respect as something that one gains through power over others, so that they dare not cross you, or challenge you, or try to push you around. Others may see respect as something one gains through a sense of humanitarian service, by being willing to help one's fellow human beings, by unselfish efforts to make the world a better place for all peoples to live in. Some may see respect as something that you have to earn, something you have to fight for. Others may see a certain basic respect as being a consideration and regard and caring which all human beings owe to one another because we are fellow human beings together under one gracious God.
As I often do, I'm thinking back to the mid-1940s. Many of us tend to think of the days of our childhood as "the good ole' days." There is a tendency to idealize those years, to forget the bad parts, and to magnify the good. The mid-1940s was a portion of my childhood when I first began remembering. Probably my first real memory of the times, 1943 to 1945, aside from our horses and cows and our farm, was the war -- World War II. I learned to recognize my letters and some words by sitting on my Dad's lap while he read the newspaper. We always read the comics, and Dick Tracy and his two-way wrist radio, and Alley Oop, and Nancy and Sluggo; but we also read about the Japanese kamikaze planes, and the great battleships and war cruisers and B-17 bombers and P-38 fighters, and the B-29 that dropped the atom bomb.
These days, many people look back on the generation who came through the Great Depression and the Great War in the 1930s and the 1940s as "the Great Generation." We ended the 1940s relieved that we had won the great war with Japan and the Hitler regime in Germany, and we did have a feeling then that we were a great nation.
Those were days when patriotism was celebrated, when most people saluted and respected the nation's flag, when most people stood with their hands over their hearts when the National Anthem was played or sung, and when there was a general optimism that we as a people could now face the future with confidence that we can work together to bring about a better day in our country and in the world. There was a general emphasis that we all needed to contribute, not only to the war effort, but also to the efforts to make peace in the aftermath of war. Our leadership in Washington, D.C., believed that we should be paying for the war as we fought it, so taxes were rather high, and it was considered patriotic to pay our taxes. We were borrowing money from our own people to finance the war effort, especially by trying to get everyone to invest in War Bonds. Somehow, in the midst of the Great Depression, our country had created Social Security to help our people survive their older years, and the nation's Rural Electrification Administration (REA) had brought home electricity to most areas across the nation, even to our farms and other out-in-the country areas.
Those were times in our country (1932 to 1952) when we had liberal Democratic administrations in Washington, D.C., with Franklin D. Roosevelt and then Harry Truman as president. Our Congress and Senate had liberal Democrats and conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans and conservative Republicans, and they were always arguing and battling among themselves over ideas and policies. But they were generally civil towards one another. They even cultivated friendships across the aisle, and they usually found ways to do the nation's governing business together.
Of course, I doubt that we would want to get back to the late 1940s or early 1950s, great as they were. There were lots of things then that needed to be made better. Some of them are better now. We still have things that need to be better. As in America the Beautiful, "May God thy gold refine, till all success be nobleness, and every gain divine!"
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 09/21/2016