America Is Great, Gov. Cuomo

By Rob Schwarzwalder Published on August 16, 2018

“We’re not going to make America great again — it was never that great.” Thus spoke New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo yesterday. “We will reach greatness,” he explained, “when discrimination and stereotyping against women is gone.”

His spokeswoman quickly tried to calm the firestorm. “The governor believes America is great and that her full greatness will be fully realized when every man, woman, and child has full equality.”

They didn’t mean to be so honest. But they were. And what they said clarified one of American liberalism’s most basic tenets: Nothing short of perfection is truly great, truly good and noble. And since America is imperfect, it cannot be great. Gov. Cuomo has lifted the mask of the Left’s contempt for our country.

Offensive and Painful

I am not just offended by Gov. Cuomo’s remark. I am pained by them.

First, we do have full equality. But since we’re fallen people, it will never be applied perfectly all the time for everyone. Here’s what the left consistently doesn’t get: Imperfection does not equate to unworthiness.

Imagine a painting of surpassing beauty. Close scrutiny would reveal some poorly applied brush strokes. Badly mixed colors. A lack of precise proportion. But a step back would refresh one’s sense of the painting’s magnificence, its elegance and ability to elevate and inspire.

So it is with our country. Focus on its blemishes and the America looks badly soiled. But taken as a whole and in proper perspective, America’s grandeur, her greatness, is stunning.

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America is great because throughout our history, we have sought to realize the promise of our founding more and more fully. We started with a very clear declaration of belief: Every person is made by a Creator, Who bestows equal value on everyone. He has endowed, imbued, each of us with certain rights from which we cannot be “alienated,” or separated.

We’ve worked to make that founding declaration real. No nation has worked so hard to correct its sins and mistakes.

A More Perfect Union

All that the governor ignores. We have sought, and many of us continue to seek, an ever more perfect union. A nation’s character cannot rightly be measured solely by its moral failures. It cannot be judged solely by how hard it works to overcome them. It must also be judged by what it has given its people.

And what has America given its people? What does Gov. Cuomo ignore to make his p.c. statement?

330 million people enjoy degrees of freedom and opportunity and prosperity unknown by any nation in history. Ours is not a police state but one in which the police protect lives, property and freedoms.

No one is coerced to worship someone else’s god. No one is forced to accept a government’s propaganda as inspired truth. And no one is sent to a distant network of prison camps for refusing to bend the knee to the state. And we have gone from Jim Crow to Barack Obama in the space of half a century. A nation entrenched in racial bias would never have done this.

The Military

We have the finest and most ethical military ever possessed or exercised by a global power. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking at an international conference in 2003, captured it well: “There is nothing in American experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want to use hard power,” he said.

But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do have hard power, then sometimes you are faced with situations that you can’t deal with. I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. [We launched] the Marshall Plan. So, our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear.

No nation has ever been so generous in helping former enemies rebuild their shattered countries. No people give more to help those in need around the world.

Take a Lesson, Governor

There has never been and never will be a country that achieves and maintains moral, social, and political perfection. Nor has there ever been, and nor is there likely ever to be, a country whose commitment to human dignity can match that of the United States.

Gov. Cuomo’s ancestors were Italian immigrants. I suggest he take a lesson from another American of Italian heritage, filmmaker Frank Capra. In 1982, Capra was given a lifetime achievement award by the American Film Institute. After thanking the audience for the award, he said it really hadn’t been necessary. “For America, just for living here, I kiss the ground.”

Take a lesson from Mr. Capra, Governor. Learn it well.

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