By contrast, the greatest friend of justice is the one who explores and presents history in the calm bright light of reason. The analysis of past events, not passion, allows justice to manifest itself.
A dizzying amount of vocabulary is generated by those who claim to represent the cause of justice and who claim to be the ally of Black, Brown, African American, Latino, and Hispanic people. Yet those who present themselves as friends of the oppressed routinely have the net effect of removing hope: they offer a political doctrine which teaches groups to view themselves exclusively as oppressed victims and to seek help by making themselves reliant on paternalistic sources of support.
Hope and justice arise when individuals see themselves capable of creativity, ingenuity, and autonomy — and see themselves as individuals, not merely members of some demographic segment, as educator Stephen Tootle writes:
The students at the college where I teach are mostly poor, and most of them have brown skin. But they are not stupid and they are not lazy. They have been told for most of their lives — by people claiming to help them — that the system is rigged, that the past is nothing but a record of oppression, that they should not want to participate in our sick society, that racism is the answer to racism, and that freedom exists only to crush the weak. Yet something inside them has always led them to believe that those ideas are wrong.
The United States has offered hope and opportunity to people of all religions and races, to people of all languages and ethnicities. America’s structure is such that injustices, when they occur, are addressed and corrected. This is more than can be said of many countries, which is why immigrants continue to desire U.S. citizenship.
One aspect of the American mentality is the acknowledgement of two facts which have emerged in the history of the world: humans seek freedom, and they seek acknowledgement of their individuality. Stephen Tootle continues:
Hope brought them into my classroom. Hope keeps them going when they’re surrounded by people who not only are not supportive but are actively working to undermine their plans. They read Hamilton. They identify with his ideas regardless of such matters as the passage of time and the color of his skin — or theirs. They know that America is a land of hope.
To teach students about the history of the United States, and to teach them unapologetically about America’s promotion of liberty and individuality, is to offer hope.
Hope thus offered is more than a sentiment. It is empowerment. It is the ability to see one’s self incorporated into an ideology of empowerment. Free markets and free enterprise foster hope and foster concrete advancement for those who engage in them. Property rights create dignity and energize industriousness — a family which owns the smallest home on the smallest piece of land is motivated and prompted to act with more resoluteness than a family which holds no property.
A nation governed by freely-elected representatives is a nation with hope. These motivational lessons arise from studying the history of the United States.
