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Nick Pandelidis| York Daily Record

For most persons of my generation and older disparaging America as racist and inequitable or condemning our free market system as unfair and greedy capitalism has been an inconceivable and shocking development. We grew up believing in and knowing our country's greatness and goodness.

We are a nation born of the 1776 Declaration that all persons are created equal, endowed by God with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property of which no legitimate government can deprive them. We are under no illusion that America has always lived up to this ideal, but even imperfectly implemented, America has been the most free, most prosperous, and most just society the world has known. America, as the foremost destination of the world's poor and oppressed, all seeking the opportunities of freedom, bears this statement's truth.

The far-left progressives revolutionaries reject this history. They instead assert our country was founded on the institution of slavery and that our country is systematically racist and unequal. They aim to rewrite American history and rehabilitate America on this fabricated declaration.

The American is Great vision honors and protects the sovereignty of the individual. The revolutionaries disregard the individual's God-given uniqueness and complexity, instead creating collective identity classes according to skin color, sexual preference, or self-conceived gender perception. The revolutionaries see these identity groups as oppressed and needful of societal redress, except for "white" men and, to a lesser extent, "white" women, whom they deem privileged and the cause of the other classes' troubles and needful of repentance. Assigning diverse and multifaceted individuals to a collective group based on a singular superficial characteristic is the very definition of racism and the foundation of totalitarianism.

The America is Great vision places the nuclear family at the keystone of American community and society. Father and mother, sovereigns of their home and family, living their lives and taking responsibility for providing for and raising their children as they see fit. The revolutionaries say traditional family is a social construct of less enlightened times, as are traditional views of gender and marriage, not recognizing these are realities of our created nature.

The America is Great vision understands that individual freedom requires personal virtue for a just and happy society: honesty, industriousness, courage, and duty to self, family, community, country, and God. Virtue in the America is Great vision begins and ends with the individual. That vision understands betterment of society begins and ends with self. That vision knows society cannot make moral decisions or do virtuous acts. Only the individual can do so. For the revolutionaries, virtue is finding fault and blame in others. There is no virtue, only politically correct virtue signaling.

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The America is Great vision celebrates the free market economy. It honors the hard-working and innovative entrepreneurs who have so improved our lives. The America is Great vision recognizes free markets have driven and continue to drive the economic growth that is vanquishing poverty, cleaning the environment, spreading educational opportunity, and extending life throughout the world. Yet, the revolutionaries disparage the entrepreneurs, as if the ever-improving technology, goods, and services enriching our lives just happens or, even more fantastic, the government could do it. They disregard the record of economic freedom, but instead embrace socialism, an economic system where the more extensively it has been implemented, the worse has been the economic outcome. Venezuela, or more correctly, the Venezuelan people, are socialism's latest victim.

The America is Great vision is democracy established on the moral principle that every person has God-given inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property. The revolutionaries have no regard for the individual or individual rights but instead want to expand the government's power to rehabilitate America and impose their collectivist, egalitarian utopian vision. And they call this "democracy." But democracy disregarding the individual's rights is nothing more than mob rule and totalitarianism. Have we so soon forgotten those communist governments compelling the "collective good," resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths just a few decades ago?

America can be great again. However, pursuing progressive policies of identity politics, critical race theory, moral relativism, and socialism will only further our societal division, acrimony, and our material and spiritual distress. At the same time, making America Great is much more than Trumpian nationalism. Instead, we must return to our country's foundational values and vision.

Firstly, we must love, respect, protect, and celebrate the bestowed uniqueness and sovereignty of every individual. We must understand that healing our society's divisions and despair begins with rebuilding families and communities of families. Bettering society must and can only start with self. As individuals, we must take responsibility and we must do the good and right we can. We must also recognize and be thankful for the material abundance created by free markets. Government economic intervention only enriches politicians, bureaucrats, and their cronies, and inevitably results in unintended economic consequences, harming consumers and the poor most of all.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (persons) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Nick Pandelidis is a retired physician living in Shrewsbury.

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July 4th thoughts: the 'American is Great vision' vs. the 'revolutionary' vision | opinion - York Daily Record