Current American Self-Criticism
Today we are almost engulfed by this tide of self-criticism, depreciation, and defamation of those who served our country honorably and with distinction. A most recent victim of the tarnish brush is J. Edgar Hoover. I knew J. Edgar Hoover personally over many years. He was a God-fearing man and one of the most honorable and able men I have ever known in government service. By innuendo, lesser men, whose own motives are questionable, have maligned his motives and good character.
I know the philosophy behind this practice—“to tell it as it is.” All too often those who subscribe to this philosophy are not hampered by too many facts. When will we awaken to the fact that the defamation of our dead heroes only serves to undermine faith in the principles for which they stood, and the institutions which they established? Some have termed this practice as “historical realism” or moderately call it “debunking.” I call it slander and defamation. I repeat, those who are guilty of it in their writing or teaching will answer to a higher tribunal.
It should not, therefore, cause us to be astonished when other nations view the United States as a “faltering democracy.” How long would a basketball team, ranked number one in the polls, remain in that position if the student body, the school paper, and supporting faculty constantly pointed out its weaknesses? Soon the team would begin to lack confidence and fail. This is what we have been doing in our blessed country. Our heroes and institutions have been tarnished. We are constantly being reminded of what is wrong in our country, via the press and other media. A recent editorial in the London Daily Telegraph appealed to us:
The United States should know that her European cousins and allies are appalled and disgusted at the present open disarray of her public life. The self-criticism and self-destructive tendencies are running mad with no countervailing force in sight. . . . Please America, for God’s sake, pull yourself together.
It is the job of the historian and educator and church leader to help us as a nation to “pull ourselves together,” to help us regain perspective and vision and the respect of all nations. This will not be done by showing that this is merely a phase through which we are passing. No, it will be done by men who possess a love of country, a vision of our country’s future, and the assurance of her divinely guided destiny.
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