“Pardoning the bad is injuring the good,” is a phrase uttered by Benjamin Franklin more than 230 years ago and still holds truth in today’s United States at large.
The World Report places the U.S. eighth on the Overall Best Countries Rankings in 2019. With a population of 325-million American citizens and the greatest economy in the world, with a GDP of over 20 trillion, what is there to complain about?
Americans never face the suppression of freedoms that the citizens of Hong Kong face. Americans will never be forced to walk the streets of their towns with the fear of triggering a land mine or being bombed during a local church service.
Citizens of the U.S. live in a country in which they are proclaimed free by documentation written 230 years ago. However, the country we live in is not good enough. If the U.S. is really the best country in the world as Donald Trump claims, then there is a lot of work to be done.
What has made the U.S. great for 243 years is that it refuses to settle. The U.S. did not settle when it saw slavery in the south. The U.S. made a change, freeing the slaves and putting an end to servitude. The U.S. did not settle when it saw the rise of a dictator and his mass genocides in Germany in 1941. The U.S. intervened, putting an end to World War II.
So, the U.S. of 2019 (soon to be 2020) should do the same. Not settling for racism, police brutality, mass killings of innocent civilians, drug abuse and hunger and homelessness. But, instead, continuing to grow the nation and correcting the wrongs that plague both the country and the globe alike.
Growth like this might happen at the expense of some American’s precious luxuries. Skipping a Sunday afternoon of watching football to volunteer at a soup kitchen. Missing out on the Friday afternoon pre-game to attend a rally to protest racism and police brutality. Possibly even spending some of that $48,150-average American income on a donation to the local underfunded drug rehabilitation center.
A non-progressive America is not an America at all. America should keep growing and moving forward, a manifest destiny of sorts, but for the good of all people.
So, next time you are with friends and they tell you to be grateful for what living in the U.S. has done for you, agree with them, but don’t let them settle, because every time the U.S. ignores its bigger problems, it becomes its biggest problem.
John Pullano, Sports Editor
pullanjj18@bonaventure.edu
