Gov. Andrew Cuomo's recent statement that America was never that great was probably politically unwise. However, I agree that President Donald Trump's mantra of "making America great again" is superficial and meaningless.

As the governor suggested, what would we want to return to in order to make America great? Might it be when we forcibly removed native peoples from their homelands, putting them on the poorest land in the country to live lives of deprivation and poverty? Might it be when, for more than a century, we captured, enslaved and abused millions of African people? Might it be the period following slavery when we re-enslaved hundreds of thousands of African-Americans in a system often called neo-slavery?