Our country is great as we once were

To hear politicians speak today, especially in the campaign currently underway, one would think we have never been a great country.

But that is an erroneous statement.

Of course we have never been perfect, but that is not the meaning of great. It means being on the better side of life as it exists, and most citizens would agree that the United States of America has always achieved ideals that could be considered great even though we may have failed to achieve all of them.

So when you hear a politician say again in this campaign that he or she wants to make America great again – fill in the wording and add a bit of truth to it. No one here is perfect, but we certainly have many great people living here and helping others achieve that distinction.

It was a great achievement when George Washington became our first president and set our sights on becoming a great nation. That was to recognize the freedoms and liberties we were to enjoy in our new country where we intended to share those qualities with our fellow citizens.

And just this past weekend we had a major flare up in New Orleans where many protestors claimed we were improperly recognizing our adoption of slavery as part of our greatness in the past and honoring it by building monuments to it. Now we want to idolize those presidents and other leaders who used it as part of the platform of the way their country operated.

Sure, we made mistakes in the past, but we had to build up to our present greatness as we learned how to build a free society. And we are still working on improving it for the better.

The protests in New Orleans was to our building monuments glorifying politicians who allowed slavery in the old days.

We did away with slavery a long time ago but we still have statues that honored people who allowed it for many years.It’s time to clear the deck, folks, and quit accepting our past recognition of the wrong way to live. Doing away with a few political monuments will be beneficial if it will erase the memory of how we lived in the past before we were as great as we are.

So let’s let David Duke and his supporters go on their own in private with what they think is great and use our own decision on what’s right and wrong. We are a great country today because we gave everyone the right to enjoy it.

And let’s keep making it great.