Other Voices: Nation decided it could change

For the first time in my life, I am proud not only of America, but of the majority of people in it.

I appropriate and modify Michelle Obama's words with due care paid to their true meaning, and with due consideration of their import, and I say them because they are simply true.

From the time I was first old enough to have the first stirrings of social awareness or political consciousness, I have felt that I have lived in a country that has been altogether too ready to congratulate itself undeservedly, and altogether too willing to overlook its deficits with a nod and a wink. The smug, self-regarding mantra "the greatest country on earth," repeated endlessly and in all possible contexts, is one of those third-rail memes that it is drilled into all of us from infancy, and which it is still considered unconscionable to seriously question, despite the obvious logical fallacies.

"Greatest" by what yardstick? Certainly not the most just, not the most politically or economically equitable, not the most compassionate; not the most intellectually robust. Apart from military power and gross economic might, the United States — whose last known lynching, after all, was less than a decade ago — has made a habit of leaving the grand potential outlined in its constitution unrealized.

Its citizenry, in turn, have seldom shown particular concern or commitment towards achieving that realization, preferring to comfort itself with back-patting platitudes, even as it drifted ever further into trivial-mindedness and sloth.

Nov. 4, 2008, has done a lot to change all of that.

This Election Day, Americans as a whole did something they have seldom done: They challenged themselves to strive toward the greatness they have often pretended at, to look beyond the comfort of indolent complacency and the paralysis of fear. Americans stood up and made a single, profound choice that few ever imagined that we would make within our lifetimes: We elected an African-American man as our leader.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of this gesture, particularly considering what the words "black man" have historically meant: In the pre-Civil War era, the synonym was "slave;" in the reconstruction era, an object of contempt or ridicule; for the bulk of the 20th Century, second-class citizen; to the electorate of 1988, a social menace (see: Willie Horton). But to the America of 2008, these words have come to also mean "President-Elect."

With the elevation of Barack Obama to its highest elected office, the American public has issued a final, unmistakable refutation of centuries' worth of institutionalized prejudice and fear, expressly acknowledging for the first time that the members of this nation's minority communities truly are full, equal partners in the American adventure, and fully vested stakeholders in this nation's cultural, political and economic life. Even more significantly, the American public has ensconced a member of one of these minority communities as the very steward of its future.

To Barack Obama and his followers, "Yes We Can" was a pithy, well-chosen campaign slogan. Applied to America on the whole, it becomes something more. "Yes We Can" marks a growing collective realization: Yes We Can, as a people and as a nation, live up not only to our own hype, but to our potential. Yes We Can choose to evolve beyond social balkanization, beyond rabid self-interest, beyond ignorance, beyond narcissism, beyond fear. Yes We Can transcend the self-imposed limitations that led us to overlook the iniquity and injustice on our own doorsteps. Yes We Can live up to the noble concepts and stirring words that served as the cornerstone of our long-troubled democracy, and finally fully realize that yes, all men (and women) are created equal.

This Nov. 4, tens of millions of Americans stepped across a significant psychological threshold, incontrovertibly committing their country to a new politics, a new adherence to principle and a new consciousness of its founding ideals. Tens of millions of Americans demonstrated, in practice, a bravery, an integrity and a commitment to justice that all too often had only existed in principle. And if that's not a reason to be truly proud of America, I don't know what is.

David Livingstone is a columnist with North Star Writers Group.