After the last seven weeks, it is safe to say that the United States has never been a perfect nation, whether it is in regards to how it treated the natives that the European settlers encountered, the bondage of kidnapped Africans in the chattel slavery system that was in place until the Civil War, or the bullying of foreign states to get what it wanted militarily, but mostly economically. However, the United States has also strived to be a “more perfect Union,” as immortalized in the U.S. Constitution, and in general Americans has always sought to be the best nation it can be. As Winston Churchill once stated, “the Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted,” and that sentiment has shown itself to be very true in our history, especially as demonstrated in this series discussion of slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and even the Panama Canal.
It is that quest to become a more perfect nation that I as an American am most proud of. Our nation has made many mistakes in the past, yet each new generation rises with the goal of making the United States better than when it was. Indeed, America does not need to be made great again by harkening back to some idealized version of an old era of our past like some politicians and their followers wish. Rather, the United States being great is because its people wish to see their nation continue to improve, to provide opportunities for the next generation that did not previously exist, and to bring innovations in science and technology that make the world a better place.
I had originally sought to include the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and U.S. involvement in the Middle East in this series, however after much thought, each of those topics deserve their own multi-part series, of which I am still working on scheduling into the next couple of years (most likely in 2025, as I do want to have some freedom in 2024 to provide an historian’s perspective on that election cycle, and longer series tend to not give me as much flexibility as needed).
This will be the last blog for a several weeks, as I am taking a break to develop and write the next series which will start on August 5th, which will be a semester long series covering the history of military thought and strategy.