Over the last several weeks, I have wrestled with a question that just will not go away: is there hope for America?
I taught high school history and government for almost twenty years, and I have always concluded that the idea behind the United States was a good idea.
The United States was by no means perfect. There are several black spots on our history: slavery, the relocation and/or slaughter of the American Indian, the internment camps of Japanese Americans following Pearl Harbor, McCarthyism, Jim Crowe…
The list goes on. I am not naïve enough to pretend we’re perfect. No nation is.
However, what makes the American idea unique is that it is based on an accurate understanding of human nature. The framers of the constitution knew human nature is fallen.