Offering gratitude in the American conversation
In response to my column a few weeks ago about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s egregious, mean-spirited and graceless ingratitude for having been welcomed as a refugee into this country, reader Robert McLaughlin wrote an oped in which he criticized the suggestion that the Minnesota congresswoman owed any gratitude at all for the gift of citizenship. He made the common mistake that I’ve seen others, usually liberals, make: that expecting someone – in this case a refugee from war-torn Somalia – to express her thanks is unreasonable. The theory is that U.S. citizens are blessed with the inalienable right to speak freely, and if they choose to speak freely about the presumed flaws of their adopted home, we should celebrate an act that is as American as apple pie.
Normally, I do not respond to people who take issue with my columns, unless they email me directly. That’s why I long ago stopped reading Sound Off with its “Get Off My Lawn!” zeitgeist. But Mr. McLaughlin’s defense of Omar exemplified a problem I see in our society, one that has increased as we wade deeper into Donald Trump’s presidency, and I’m actually glad he gave me the opportunity to address it.
Expecting people to be thankful for the good things that life has brought to them is normal, and the sign of a civil society. It is a hallmark of the type of values we used to treasure, in a country where people recognized that humility and gratitude are virtues, not weakness or abnegation. Many Trump opponents point to his constant narcissism, the sense that he thinks so highly of himself that he can’t even consider the possibility of error in judgment or character. I absolutely agree with them that he is difficult to take, and that his constant tweeting about being “the biggest” or “the best” or “the smartest” or “the least racist” grates on the nerves. He is none of those things, and I suspect even he knows it.
I was also angry when Trump appeared to criticize the United States by suggesting, with his slogan “Make America Great Again” that it was somehow mediocre now. That’s the message you get from disaffected progressives like Omar (to whom I will return in a moment), not from people who have a deep and abiding love for our country a la Ronald Reagan. This is not to say that I subscribe to the philosophy of “America, Love Her or Leave Her,” which is a simplistic way of saying “just shut up.” As I noted before, I believe that there is definitely a place for speech that criticizes us in order to raise us to a higher plane. And we know what that type of criticism looks like.
Let me give you an example of it. The great black poet Langston Hughes wrote a poem that is searing in its honesty, its pain and its hope. In “Let America Be America Again,” Hughes pens these heartbreaking lines:
(you can read the rest of the poem at this link: https://poets.org/poem/letamerica-be-america-again)
The poet is criticizing a country where racism and poverty were rampant, and where injustice was a daily expectation for people who did not belong to the privileged classes. And yet, you can take from his masterpiece the sense that even though America has disappointed him, even though America is cracked and blurred around the edges, he believes that it can and will live up to the essential promise of her origins. And subtly, but powerfully, he communicates his love and gratitude for the “land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, the mountains and the endless plain” that should belong to him as much as to any man.
Langston Hughes was born in this country. Citizenship was his birthright. Ilhan Omar was airlifted out of a country that had devolved into anarchy, was given a home, an education, and endless opportunities for advancement. These things were not her birthright. They were gifts given to her freely and with an open heart. That merits gratitude. Every immigrant I know is grateful, some to the point of tears when they take their oath of allegiance to the United States.
And beyond that fact, one that Robert McLaughlin appears to reject, there is another problem with the idea that expecting gratitude from Omar is an attempt to silence her. No one is trying to keep the congresswoman from speaking. No one could, even if they tried. But freedom of speech is not the same thing as freedom from consequence. When I write things that people reject, they are not shy about letting me know it. So it is with a public figure like Ilhan Omar. Telling her that her anti-Semitism, her anti-Catholicism, her anti-white male, anti-GOP, anti-conservative pronouncements are anathema is legitimate, if you (as I) believe that to be the case. And it has absolutely nothing to do with whether she is humble enough to thank Allah and the U.S. government for giving her the opportunity to say those things without fear of governmental retaliation.
In the end, it really doesn’t matter much what Mr. McLaughlin or I think of Ilhan Omar. She is one of those politicians who will likely be long gone before the toxicity of her beliefs and her manner become a significant and lasting part of our national narrative.
What matters is that we learn to be grateful, again, for the ability to live in a country with potential for greatness. What matters is that we look at each other as Americans, flawed, angry, striving, fearful in the shadow of tragedy, resilient, and loving.
And instead of listening to the hateful rhetoric of a woman who despises those who have not lived her experience or walked in her shoes, let’s cling to the plea of Langston Hughes: