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Our exceptional nation has lost its way | Opinion

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there," quipped Lewis Carroll, but if you don't know where you've been, you're already lost.

I’ve always believed that America is exceptional. You can start with our Constitution. It’s the oldest written one in the world. And we were first to separate the institutions of church and state. (Can you imagine having Donald Trump – or Barack Obama, for that matter – in charge of the church?) Then, there’s World War II, the Marshall Plan and the United Nations (which we essentially started). Not to mention having the world’s biggest economy and more than half of its great universities. Without America, the entire world could be living under dictatorship with freedom no more than a foggy memory in the minds of a few senior citizens.

If that’s not exceptional, what is?

Exceptionalism's meaning has changed

But at its inception, American exceptionalism was not about power or privilege. It was about service. Puritan John Winthrop, Massachusetts’ first governor, likened us to ancient Israel. On the deck of the Arbella -- before they even set foot on what was to become Boston -- Winthrop told his comrades that they were to be a light to the nations, a blessing to others, a “city on a hill.”

I’m not buying or selling Winthrop’s theocratic tendencies, but I do accept the notion that if America was to be exceptional, it was to be exceptionally good. Of course, we have never lived up to Winthrop’s lofty vision, but “liberty and justice for all” remains the goal for which we strive. That's is why all Americans should be troubled by what’s going on in our country, and I’m not even talking about impeachment. I’m talking about what America is doing. What she is becoming.

Our treatment of immigrants is shameful

It starts at our borders and, even more broadly, at immigration offices all across the country. We’re beginning to act like, well ... jerks. We all know about the practice of separating small children from their parents. That was the worst part. But it’s broader than that. At the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in my native East Tennessee, for example, those seeking citizenship or asylum are forced to line up and stand outside for hours without so much as a chair to sit in or a roof over their heads. Worse still, they are not allowed access to a bathroom. Not so much as a Porta-Potty.

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Forget whether a particular mother and child should be granted asylum, but while they are awaiting a decision can we at least not make them pee in their pants?

The selfish generation

On the domestic front, we have gone from the “Greatest Generation,” whose members lived modestly and paid as much as 90% of their income in taxes, to my own selfish generation, which has spent lavishly yet cut its taxes repeatedly such that the national debt we are leaving to our children is now more than $22 trillion.

To give you some idea of just how much money that is, consider this. If you began spending a million dollars a day on the day Jesus was born and continued up to the present, you would still not have spent your first trillion.

We're ignoring climate change

On the international front, things are even worse. In the face of history’s gravest threat to our species and to our planet, we are leading the world in the wrong direction, away from international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and toward more gas, more coal and more carbon dioxide. Just imagine if, when the world was facing down Hitler, we had sat on our hands or, even worse, lent him a few billion.

Not only is the U.S. defying science – which turns out to be true whether you believe in it or not – we are dismantling existing Environmental Protection Agency regulations faster than you can say “Houston is underwater again.” Incredible though it sounds, we are even going to court to stop the decades-old practice of allowing states like California to craft their own laws to protect their water and air.

And I haven’t even mentioned the scofflaw in the White House or the un-statesmen who are running (ruining?) Congress. That’s the sorry state of our dear nation today whether we care to admit it or simply continue playing our fiddles while the world burns.

So, would I still say America is exceptional? I suppose so. But for now, it would appear exceptionally bad.

Buzz Thomas is a retired minister, constitutional lawyer and school superintendent and a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors.