Note from Steve: This is an essay submission for Steve’s Great American Essay Challenge. These will run nightly for as long as there are submissions. Submit your own to earn a TNB coffee mug and maybe even more.
The essays will remain anonymous until the end of the challenge. Please do not claim this essay until we are ready for that reveal.
“Wars not make one great.” Yoda in Star Wars
“America will be great if America is good. If not, her greatness will vanish away like a morning cloud.” Andrew Reed and James Matheson 1835
“It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” Gandalf in Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
“Gem dealer 1: As in every stone of this size, there is a flaw.
Sultan: A flaw?
Gem dealer 2: The slightest flaw, your excellency.
Gem dealer 1: If you look deep into the stone, you will perceive the tiniest discoloration. It resembles an animal.
Sultan: An animal?
Gem dealer 1: A little panther.
Sultan: Yes! A pink panther. Come here, Dala. A gift to your father from his grateful people. Some day it will be yours. The most fabulous diamond in all the world.”
The Pink Panther (1963 film)
While greatness is subjective, I think it has general qualities that most people tend to agree on. It is not perfection. Great people are not perfect people. They have faults and flaws like all human beings. What makes a person great might be action and response in time, place or situation, rising above challenges, informed by experience and experiences. Great people demonstrate qualities like civic responsibility, honesty, humility, willingness to learn, desire to improve, admit when wrong and get back on track, creativity and thinking outside the box, leadership, extrapolation, foresight, flexibility, focus, persuasion, dedication, selflessness, generosity, sacrifice, courage, bravery and intuition. They answer the voiced or voiceless call, even if or despite being afraid or uncertain. At an appropriate point, great people retire from the field with dignity and grace, leaving an improved and inspired nation readied and even eager for the next step.
These are the kinds of things any great people demonstrate. Any great person from any place or any creed. But what makes a Great American? Another question with subjective answers, but here is a perspective to consider. America is an idea that human beings from diverse corners of the world can join together in one nation to govern themselves with Liberty to all. Abraham Lincoln saw our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Union as precious, as ideas that must be preserved, with “Liberty to all” as its energizing founding principle. He said “All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of “Liberty to all” — the principle that clears the path for all — gives hope to all — and, by consequence, enterprize [sic], and industry to all.
“The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate. Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity. No oppressed people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better than a mere change of masters.”
To repeat “No oppressed people will fight and endure without the promise of something better than a … change of masters.” And having achieved a nation where the self-evident truths of our founding documents are our goal, the great people of our great nation will not abandon that promise. A Great American directs his or her special qualities toward the energizing principle of “Liberty to all” under the overarching guidance of our founding documents and beliefs to work and lead ever toward something better.
Great Americans strive to preserve and share the gift of “Liberty to all” – the most fabulous diamond in all the world.
