Is America Great... or Not?

The greatness of America is not defined by the multiple wars, both here and abroad, that it has survived in over 300 years.

Nor is it defined by the number of racial, religious, or political incidents, both good and bad, that have both improved or plagued it over that time.

Nor is it defined by its economic or financial prowess.  Nor by its military strength.  Nor by its willingness to assist others when asked - and sometimes when not asked.

The greatness of America is defined by its ability to recover from disasters both natural and man-made, recognize and reward those who have improved the American condition while ostracizing and punishing those who have reveled in hate, always working toward Constitutionally-based justice no matter the opposition, opposing those who would taint the American electoral process by attempts at falsifying votes, and by providing a legal basis for the core rights defined in the Declaration of Independence:

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

America is great when it provides the most amount of freedom to the greatest number of The People, where "freedom" is defined as "being allowed to do what you want to do as long as it does not directly interfere with what others want to do".

The greatness of America is its self-corrective nature: situations that cause inequality are always eliminated, even though it may take time to identify both the situation and the remedial action necessary.

The greatness of America is in its justice system, especially when the system acts only according to Constitutionally-defined "rules of the road" and not when any of the three branches exercises powers that are not in its provenance.

The greatness of America is in its use of time-limited democratically-elected representatives to the central government, and the ability of The People to either re-elect those representatives or elect different representatives as they so choose.

The greatness of America is that it allows anyone to achieve anything they wish to achieve on their own merit.  The only limits on your success in the American capitalist system are those limits you place on yourself.

The greatness of America is that it has and will continue to withstand attacks on its political system by those who would try to destroy that system and replace it with another by using the freedoms that America provides in an attempt to undermine those same freedoms... and who may not realize that they are attacking a system that allows such attacks *without revenge*.

America has been hurt in the past by those whose personal agendas did not overlap with American values as defined in both the Declaration of Independence, which delineates those values, and in the Constitution of the United States, which provides a legislative basis for those values.

America will survive as long as The People continue to refer back to the Founder's reasons for designing the only truly democratic form of government that has survived in the Modern Age.

The Founders gave us a Republic.  Our job, as defined by Ben Franklin, is to "keep it".