What the ‘G’ in ‘MAGA’ could really mean

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Are we making America great again? Let’s not forget what greatness looks like.

In 1945, at the end of World War II, much of Europe was devastated. Major cities and industrial facilities had been bombed into rubble. Small towns and villages were isolated by the destruction of railroads and bridges. Millions of refugees were living in camps. Food shortages and unemployment set off strikes and civil disturbances in several countries.

European recovery dragged on slowly. In a speech at Harvard on June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall urged the United States to do all it could to “assist in the return of normal economic health to the world … [and combat] hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”

By the next March, Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act, better known as the Marshall Plan. Between 1948 and 1951, the Marshall Plan sponsored hundreds of large-scale tours by European business leaders and experts to learn modern American farming and manufacturing techniques, fostered the integration of European trade that we see today, and pumped the present-day equivalent of $150 billion into the Western Europe economies.

Agriculture was slower to fully rebound, but for manufacturing the Marshall Plan actually exceeded its goal. By the plan’s completion, industrial output for the recipient countries was 35% higher than before the war. While U.S. aid was not the sole cause of this remarkable recovery, it played a key role as a stimulus, a stabilizer and a reason for hope.

That is how a great nation acts in the world.

In 1935, half of Americans over 65 lived in poverty. They often had little state support and were dependent on their families or whatever they had managed to save. But that year Congress got over America’s traditional suspicion of socialism and passed the Social Security Act of 1935. That landmark legislation started a dramatic reduction in poverty among the elderly.

The 1935 act and its subsequent expansions were prime factors in cutting the poverty rate among the elderly to its current level of about 10%. Two-thirds of recipients rely on Social Security for most of their income.

A great nation extends a helping hand to its citizens in need.

In the reconstruction period following the Civil War, African Americans in the South began to vote in large numbers. Registration rates were nearly 60% in South Carolina and 80% in Mississippi. But by 1900, a combination of literacy tests, poll taxes, property-ownership requirements and outright intimidation had almost totally eradicated Black voting in some states. Voting remained suppressed for decades.

Responding to the moral leadership of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. Within two years over half of eligible Black voters were registered in all but four of the 13 southern states.

A great nation protects the rights of all its citizens.

When a cause is just, most people see that. These ambitious programs did not spark bitter partisan feuds. Huge majorities of both parties in Congress united behind all three.

My father used to tell stories from World War II about the vitality and solidarity of a country that unites behind a great common purpose. In the winter of 1942-43 he took a troop train from naval training in Rhode Island to ship out in California. At every stop, local civilians had set up tables and handed out coffee, sandwiches and warm, homemade sweaters.

Later my father wound up in a naval hospital in Seattle for several weeks. Local residents would come and take ambulatory patients home for family dinners. When the war ended with him in the Philippines, he intended to go straight back to Seattle, until he found out that he had to be discharged in Duluth, where he’d enlisted.

This man, who I don’t know had ever been outside Minnesota before the war, was greatly moved to find that he was a citizen of a vast nation that had banded together to combat a profound evil.

America can tell plenty of other greatness stories. The EPA cut tailpipe pollutants 98%. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was instrumental in bringing deaths per mile of car travel down 75%. PEPFAR, the nonpartisan President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that provides daily antiretroviral treatment primarily in Africa, has saved 26 million lives.

A complete list would be long.

Yes, there are limits on the greatness of a nation. In his 1932 classic work on political power, “Moral Man and Immoral Society,” the leading theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr explained that while individuals may aspire to altruism and objectivity, human collectives invariably act on self-interest and collective egoism.

Fair enough. But building allies abroad, nurturing needy citizens and protecting civil rights are actually self-interested strategies. They make us safer and more cohesive; they promote the general welfare. They are the smartest kind of “America First” policies.

Many Americans voted for change, and they should expect it. The national political will exists for big accomplishments. With the dignity and thoughtfulness that marked big accomplishments in our recent history, it would be possible to secure our borders, streamline the government, and restore some fairness to our economy — and maybe even do it with big majorities.

So let us keep in mind what true greatness looks like and how it is achieved. Above all, we must not become habituated, so that daily doses of small-mindedness start to seem normal, and the least semblance of dignity is cause for exaltation.

Bruce Peterson is a senior district judge and teaches a course on lawyers as peacemakers at the University of Minnesota Law School.