America is a marriage

A better marriage than it was at the start.

When we started this family more than 200 years ago, it was not a partnership between equals. It was the (white) man making all of the decisions for everyone.

If you weren’t a white man with a deed, you had to hope that one of them was making decisions that you liked.

It was not a marriage of love; it was an arranged marriage that someone made to enrich those with the most power in the relationship. If you were not one of those who had the power, you might get lucky and enjoy some benefits that fell like crumbs from the table.

Note: America started as an idea, not an established fact.

How does it sit with you that, for almost 100 years, white men and only white men made the decisions for everyone in the United States?

Does that fit with what you believe America is or is supposed to be?

I doubt it.

Let’s look at these two facts:

People of color–and only men–got the right to vote in 1870.

Women got the right to vote in 1920.

Many people of color could not vote in actuality until the 1960s.

So, in a nation that is only 244 years old, all of its citizens have enjoyed the right to vote in practice for maybe 50 or 60 years.

So, there was the idea of America back at the beginning, but the reality of America did not catch up to that idea for close to 180 years.

I want you to take two things from that point.

First, it is that America is an idea; not an established fact.

Our Founders knew that what they started was not complete. Not even close to complete. They knew that their practice fell shamefully short of the ideals to which they aspired.

So they expressed their faith in future generations–in us–to bring the practice of America in line with the ideals of America.

This is a process that never stops.

It is why American can never be great “again.” The American thing to do–if we are American like our Founders were American–is to always keep looking ahead to the future. To always keep working to bring the idea of America into fuller reality in our own time while knowing that it will be up to future generations to do the work that we cannot get done here and now.

That brings me to the second point–and the thesis of this post: America is a marriage.

In the beginning, it was easier because it was an arranged marriage where a few people made all the decisions for all of us.

But as each American generation brought the practice of America closer to the idea–as more and more Americans got the right to vote–our marriage began to change from an arranged marriage to a marriage of love.

Anyone who has been in love and got married knows that “love” marriages are much harder and much messier.

“Love” marriages are marriages of equals. They are marriages in which each partner chooses to enter the relationship for reasons that are far bigger and varied than economics.

In an arranged marriage, the partner with the power calls the shots and the other partner goes along with it (because she has no choice if she wants to survive).

In a “love” marriage, the partners have to work things out together.

Again, any of you who are in a “love” marriage know how hard this can be.

Over the last 60 or 70 years, America’s marriage changed to a “love” marriage. While this is much closer to the idea our Founders had in mind, it is also much, much harder.

Differences we used to be able to ignore (because certain people didn’t have any power) are difference we have to work through now.

Maybe you’re the kind of person who thinks that we should go back to arranged marriages.

But I bet you believe in marrying for love.

And I bet you believe in loving your mate because he or she is different from you.

And I bet you believe in working through your differences because being with your mate is worth it. You believe that working through your differences is where love really shows itself.

It’s hard. It’s messy. It never quite feels done.

But it’s worth it.

America is a marriage, a marriage of love. A marriage with dreams and high hopes for the future. A marriage that can work if we make it work.

It’s hard. It’s messy. It never quite feels done.

But America–what we are and what we can be–is worth it.