I wanted to say a bit about President Obama's speech on Saturday in Selma, which I think will (and should) stand as a key document in one of the central arguments of the Obama years. That argument is this: What is America? It's an argument as old as the nation itself, of course. But in the last six years it has taken on particular urgency, as Republicans have channeled the fears and resentments of many of their constituents into an ongoing stream of rhetorical bile, directed at the person of Barack Obama himself and what he represents.
A lot of people have characterized this speech as a retort to Rudy Giuliani and his recent assertion that "I do not believe that the president loves America. … he wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country." Which it was in part, but we shouldn't forget that not just Obama's patriotism but his very American-ness has been questioned from the moment he became a serious candidate for the presidency. In the eyes of Giuliani and millions like him, America is not people like Barack Obama. It's people like them, and only like them. There may be other people here, sure, but their American-ness is suspect.
I want to point to one passage in particular in Obama's speech. It's a bit long, but you should read it because it's as clear a statement of the the liberal answer to the question "What is America?" as you'll find:
For we were born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self-government, of and by and for the people. That's why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction-because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it.
Look at our history. We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, and entrepreneurs and hucksters. That's our spirit. That's who we are.
We are Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, women who could do as much as any man and then some. And we're Susan B. Anthony, who shook the system until the law reflected that truth. That is our character.
We're the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free-Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. We're the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because we want our kids to know a better life. That's how we came to be.
We're the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South. We're the ranch hands and cowboys who opened up the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers' rights.
We're the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent. And we're the Tuskegee Airmen, and the Navajo code-talkers, and the Japanese Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied.
We're the firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, the volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. We're the gay Americans whose blood ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge.
We are storytellers, writers, poets, artists who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told.
We're the inventors of gospel and jazz and blues, bluegrass and country, and hip-hop and rock and roll, and our very own sound with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom.
We are Jackie Robinson, enduring scorn and spiked cleats and pitches coming straight to his head, and stealing home in the World Series anyway.
We are the people Langston Hughes wrote of who "build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how." We are the people Emerson wrote of, "who for truth and honor's sake stand fast and suffer long;" who are "never tired, so long as we can see far enough."
That's what America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others. We respect the past, but we don't pine for the past. We don't fear the future; we grab for it. America is not some fragile thing. We are large, in the words of Whitman, containing multitudes. We are boisterous and diverse and full of energy, perpetually young in spirit. That's why someone like John Lewis at the ripe old age of 25 could lead a mighty march.
And that's what the young people here today and listening all across the country must take away from this day. You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, because you're ready to seize what ought to be.
No conservative would have spoken those words. Conservatism is about conserving, so of course the story they tell about America isn't one of constant change in order to improve the country. Their story, particularly in the last few years, is one of a kind of immaculate conception, in which the framers issued forth the nation in a state of perfection. The problems we have now can be solved if we would only revert back and be true to their vision. And the way you express that patriotism is precisely with the "stock photos or airbrushed history"-it's about praising America with the strongest voice you can muster and insisting that it is better than every other country, always has been and always will be. Yes, there are times when you can criticize the country, but that's something entirely separate from patriotism.
But the importance of this passage is about the inclusiveness of the "we" Obama repeated. It isn't that conservatives don't want their coalition to be as diverse as it can, because they do. But their leaders know that a sizeable part of the rank-and-file that votes Republican has a real problem with a "we" that includes all those different kinds of people, and that tells a story where immigrants and marchers and rabble-rousers are the heroes who define the nation, precisely because they change it.
Again, this is an old argument. But it's one conservatives are going to have an even harder time winning in the future.
