@EricHolder has asked an important question:

#When was #America #ever #great?

I realize that there is a nearly unavoidable tendency to snort and spew one's coffee when they hear or read his question for the first time. But, honestly, isn't it worth the exercise to answer it?

So, @EricHolder, I'm going to do just that, and I'm going to ask my ragtag bag of followers and detractors to contribute as well.

I'm going to offer my evidence of moments of American greatness. And I'm going to ask those that read this thread to do the same.

But wait!

There's more!

I'm going to ask my detractors and antagonists (are you seeing this @fedupaton) to contribute as well, and will welcome from them both moments of greatness and moments of shame.

But to start, how about a poll?

@EricHolder put it starkly, he sees no point in time EVER when America was great. So that makes the polling question easy:

Can you think of a single instance in which #USA has exhibited #greatness?

I disagree with @EricHolder's denial of American greatness. Without effort, I can think of many, many instances in which America's #greatness has been exhibited.

So, I'll start the conversation.

The dispute over whether the Civil War was fought to end slavery or not does not detract from the fact that, in fact, the Civil War resulted in the end of the legal status of legalized slavery.

Yes, getting the effects of slavery eradicated would take decades, a century, but there it is. The Union expended something like Three Billion 2019 dollars and a half million lives in that War.

Because they did so, folks they did not know came to know freedom.

And that was American greatness.

Do we have to go back a century to find American greatness?

Not at all.

In 2004, on #BoxingDay, an oceanic earthquake caused the most profoundly devasting tsunami in modern history.

Yet this was a half world away. We, the #USA, might have ignored the devastation.

@EricHolder doesn't do America credit. American #greatness rose to the need.

Not only did we dispatch American military personnel to aid in recovery and reconstruction, but local governments here dispatched trained rescuers as well. And we put our money where our concern was. It is estimated that fully 1/3 of Americans donated money for relief efforts.

Sure, the wealthier among us might have had opportunities to visit the exotic locales affected. But the average American never has and never will visit Indonesia. Yet we made the lives and homes and families of those distant lands our immediate and pressing concern.

That was #AmericanGreatness, @EricHolder.

Of course, we have risen to such challenges time and time and time again. @USAID, an agency of our government, serves as an organizer and provider of such aid.

usaid.gov/what-we-do/wor…

We have poor people right here in America, and sick, and homeless. And whatever it says about our collective judgment, we rise, nonetheless, in response to a half-hundred or more #international #disasters EVERY YEAR.

Not just that. We make the long-term commitment to aid others in distant lands, whether #Biafra, or #Liberia, or #Bangladesh, or #Mexico, or elsewhere.

That, @EricHolder, is American greatness.

American greatness?

How about the #MarshallPlan and the reconstruction of Europe, particularly the reconstruction of the lands of those recently armed against us and our Allies in war?

That, @EricHolder, marks #American #Greatness.

Unlike the #USSR, we did not bind our defeated enemies in crushing poverty or brutal slavery.

For all the whining about the #uglyAmerican, he comes to the needy with full hands and a disposing heart.

And that, @EricHolder, is #American #Greatness.

Some might say, our tender regard for the defeated #Germans was a feature of our love for those who were like us.

But we rebuilt #Japan too. And #Japan was a nation that had done all that it could to demonstrate its disdain for #gaijin.

#AmericanGreatness isn't just exhibited in responses to disasters and wars.

#America has been a #meltingpot unlike most any Nation on earth. Here, unlike #homogenous nations, we have applied the force of law to confirm the cherished principle of #human #equality.

And that, @EricHolder, is #American #Greatness.

But there is so much more:

In two weeks, #Brunei will begin enforcing #sharia #law, including by the imposition of capital punishment for #homosexulity. In #America, we have rejected -- as an interpretative pillar of our Constitution -- the notion that the government may decide such questions.

And #American #Greatness is found in our notions of #individual #rights and #liberties.

No, we aren't the first to have suggested that every human being has the #naturalright to life, liberty, or property.

But no Nation on earth has more vigorously developed these ideas and sought to secure them for its own People or to propagate them to the world. And for all his faults, #ThomasJefferson is #regarded the #patron #saint of #liberty for the Genius of the #DeclarationofIndependence.

Add to the organic demand that #naturalrights be #respected the American genius of carefully dividing and restraining the powers of government through #federalism and through #checksandbalances.

Our #Constitution, with its flaws, is #AmericanGreatness, @EricHolder.

The fact that you can go on #television and express your views, however preposterous, is a #study in #American #Greatness too.

Try criticizing Islam in #Brunei. In #Saudi #Arabia. Or criticize the Party in #CommunistChina.

Imagine such public scrutiny of the government being attempted in the #SovietUnion, #NaziGermany, or even in the #UnitedKingdom. Yes, in #GreatBritain, where the law treated completely truthful criticism of the gov't as "seditious libel."

America rejected #seditiouslibel when it rejected the #AlienandSeditionActs. And that, too, exhibited #AmericanGreatness, @EricHolder. We drew a line and said, "No" to the idea that publishing the truth, no matter how painful, about government deeds can ever be a criminal act.

I haven't touched on #space #exploration and all the innovations and developments that has provoked.

I haven't touched on how America's contributions to science, to medicine, to technology, to the arts, to literature, and to music evidence #AmericanGreatness, @EricHolder.

But enough from me, for now. I've got to go grocery shopping, where, thanks to refrigeration, the assembly line, and other innovations, I will NOT have to stand in a line just to watch you, or the #oligarchy walk out with the only toilet paper!