We return on this date to an important factor of life – citizenship. I am a citizen of the United States of America. I live in Minnesota, but have lived in states from coast to coast, from north to south. I feel I have a fair knowledge of the differences in Americans relative to culture, attitudes, and the various factors that define daily life. There are differences. I was born in Akron, Ohio. I met my wife in New York, during college days. Our first date was in Carnegie Hall on 57th Street in New York City. Although we were engaged in New York, I slipped the engagement ring on her finger in Omaha, when I picked her up at the train as she was on her way home to California. We married in her locale some weeks later. She lived in Berkeley, in the shadow of the University of California. She told me she did not want to live in the east, the people she felt were, a bit cold and gruff. She didn’t want to live in the mid-west where people were, too solemn and legalistic. The westerners were a bit too taken with shallow interests, but one could be oneself, and the weather was better. I did not care where we would live as long as I was engaged in Christian enterprise. She was partly right about the public cultures, but that was the way people coped in the contexts. We started out in Nebraska, moved to Illinois, to Minnesota, to Washington, to San Francisco, where from our kitchen window we could almost see across the Bay, Berkeley, where she lived when we were married. All moves had been determined by professional commitments. I liked each place we had lived, and each one to which we moved. I presumed that it was up to persons to choose preferred environments. When retirement years arrived she wanted to move back to Minnesota, and so we did. She was never happier than in this town we had left thirty years earlier. All sections should be proud of being American, where one can find, with patience, the life he or she is looking for and working to gain.
In my graduate studies at the University of Washington, I studied Communist theory, especially as related to the life and work of William Z. Foster, who headed the Communist Party in America for many years, (from the founding, with one break for Earl Browder in World War II years), from World War I to the Korean War in 1950. He ran for American president three times, garnering over a million votes once. He was something of an un-American American, a native son. He was an intense speaker, filling Madison Square Garden numerous times, aided by first class entertainment along the way. He made statements that were sometimes dissembled, but they were taken as substantive by the party faithful. For example, he berated Americans (citizens of the United States) for purloining the word American to identify the nation. The Canadians were also American, and the Mexicans too. The proud capitalist was arrogant even in naming our identity at the expense of others. Foster did not note that it was natural for Canadians to be known as Canadians, and Mexicans as Mexicans. Who would have accepted United Statesans? The name American was a natural outcome that would befit our neighbors. No other nation was using it.
We are told that the U.S.A. is known for several factors leading to greatness, or what may make nations successful. Modern America, as listed, has emerged as a leading country because of: 1)- consumerism; 2)-science; 3)- competition; 4)- medicine; 5)- work ethic; 6)- freedom of ideas; and, 6)- rule of law. Accepting the list one asks: Is that all? Little is noted for the significant impact of Christian faith, early or late in the history of the country; in the spirit of growing tolerance and good will; in the larger concept of freedom; and, a basic humor which aided the democratic pattern of national life. None of this denies the noted influential factors, but they offer some guidance to meaning. It seems to me that with the wonders of the American Golden Age more factors that made it and can keep it going, have not been recognized sufficiently, have not been understood and directed fully, to retain what was so dearly gained in life, blood, labor and faith. It was faith in better things, both secular and spiritual faith that brought so many immigrants to America and fostered those born here. Without some attention to the faith/mystery elements, greatness will be lost – as the ancient Greeks/Romans diluted important better ways. Eminence isn’t good enough. Some of the greatness grew out of high respect for education for purpose. Decay began and ultimately flourished under excesses and disregard for duty and morality. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020