America as an ideal

[barking_iguana]

John-Paul on Kerry's latest slogan

As for whether or not “Let America Be America Again” is even a good slogan, well, it’s not bad. I think Noah’s paraphrase, “Let's restore the good things about this country that George W. Bush took away” is a misreading. The key words in the slogan are “let” and “again.” The idea is “America is a good country—it’s based on all the right ideas. It has been a good country before in that it’s been on the right path before. It’s only bad when people force it into the wrong direction and make it bad. We don’t even have to restore it. It will restore itself if we let it be itself. Stop letting Bush make it into something horrible.”

The way I see it, reassuring people that they should feel good about themselves as American, while at the same time pointing out that we have a removable reason to feel bad about being American, is just right. It's slightly demagogic, in that the difference between what has been done in our name under Shrub on the one hand, and what had been done earlier and will be done again in the future on the other hand, is not as great as people want to believe -- as Kerry is encouraging us to believe. But there is a real difference, obviously. And maintaining the ideal of a good America -- a standard we demand of ourselves but one we don't blindly claim is upheld at all times, is the best way I know keep us on something approximating our best behavior.