A world view allows more realistic national critique

WASHINGTON - So much of the time, we look at our blessed United States and seem to lose faith. But I have noticed something recently. This unaccustomed loss of faith is exaggerated when our judgments are limited to our country alone.

Forgive me a personal moment as I note that I am most unapologetically pro-America, while remembering that I have spent probably a good 70 percent of my life living overseas, reporting international issues. Thus, I write about American problems compared to those of other countries. (One of my wise friends always ends our discussions of our national problems by saying, "Compared to what?")

But I always eventually embrace the conclusion that it is not so much the comparison to other countries as it is an understanding of the basic human qualities - the human nature - that underlie our actions and attitudes.

Take our discussions on the violence toward women. Often I hear American women who have been raped or otherwise manhandled by men say something like, "Men in this country ..." That is doubtless accurate when looking at the behavior of many men in New York, Los Angeles or Oklahoma City. But when you compare our rape statistics to those of Mumbai or Karachi or immigrant parts of England, we stand as an example of extraordinarily good male-female relationships.

Widely reported recently in the American press, in the wake of the shameful number of black men shot by mostly white police officers, have been complaints by victims prefaced with, "In this country ..." or "Only here ..." or "When slavery came to America."

Here we have the most misleading and most dangerously mistaken analysis possible, for it effectively denies the victims the solace and dignifying knowledge that they are part of a great sea change in American history and attitudes. In fact, by any possible measure, the U.S. is the least racially prejudiced country in the world and has done the most to erase prejudice.

When we look at race relations only inside America, it is easy to be frozen in one's own experience. When we rise above and beyond our necessarily limited view to look outward around the world, we are able to see such ugly practices everywhere. And that wider view gives us the space to see that we are not singularly targeted as evil, but that fear of "the other," far from being some uniquely American moral problem, is a broadly human crime. When we see it together, analyze it together and fight it together, it becomes a far less fearful human defect.

But it is perhaps America's important, and conflicted, attitudes about immigration that carry the most explosive potential.

The majority of American citizens seem to have decided that their country is utterly unique in its approach and intentions toward immigrants. Hear it in their repeated cries: "We are a country of immigrants! Immigrants made this country. We were made by open borders."

Except that America is, in fact, a nation of citizens - people who have already made their commitment to this land. Open borders were never a belief of our founders.

And when we compare our openness to all others, well, there just is no comparison. America takes more refugees than the rest of the world put together. But the original American plan was demanding, indeed. Immigrants had to be healthy, had to have a sponsor here and had to study hard and prepare themselves for legal immigration. Citizenship took time.

Today, there is the notion on the part of more liberal Americans that foreigners need only walk across the border and sooner or later, they'll be granted amnesty. That is why we have between 11 million and 20 million illegal aliens waiting and expecting to be legalized. No wonder there is violence in their impatience to belong.

Now that we are already days into 2016, might we not pause and look at our singularly blessed and capable nation with a slightly new eye? A gimlet eye, if you will, one that stubbornly remembers the important reasons for our birth, that dismisses the unimportant historic ones and that realizes the modern-day definitions of ourselves are most accurate when employed in comparison to what other human beings have done.

This country is THE modern nation of the world. This country is, to a great extent, the Pilgrims' "City on a Hill," which they built with true religious piety, with collective parliamentary participation and with respect for all men. Simply because its virtues and values - and political systems and structures - are now spread to so many places on Earth, we are privileged to know its importance to mankind.

But we must always strive to do better, to not lose faith, as we mature as a nation.

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

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