Make America Great Again does not refer to taking America back in time. But it refers to putting America back on the path that we dreamed about as children.

As a 70 year old, I grew up when most Americans with or without a college education could aspire to live a middle class lifestyle affording a house, two cars, food, a good vacation, a comfortable retirement, and a safe place to raise children. The American economy’s strength gave us the belief this could be possible for every American.

And for those that could not aspire to those things because of racism and poverty, we dreamed of conquering poverty and racism through education, opportunity, and values.

MLK’s vision speech resonated with us because we believed in equal opportunity and human rights over equity and group identity. The dream was not a vision of identity groups labeled as oppressors and victims competing for power, that was Malcolm X neo Marxist view, it was every individual being judged as an individual on their character. We were not great because we had achieved MLK’s dream, but because we embraced it and advanced towards it.

After passing broad civil rights legislation we focused on expanding it to women, the disabled, and most recently LBGTQ+ citizens.


In a determined effort to defeat poverty we committed trillions to programs designed to help those who could not help themselves with the construction of a social safety net and trillions more in educational, vocational, and other efforts to equip people for jobs. Vocational and community colleges sprung up to give people skills to get jobs.

As a liberal Trump’s message resonates. I want to return to making America great again, to seek an America where we are individuals first and Americans second and the goal is to end group identity below that of US citizen level and replace it with a shared set of values grounded in human rights, tolerance, and individualism.

Greatness was a dream, but it seemed possible when most of us aspired for America to become one nation through the melting pot of assimilation rather than the fragmented society of different groups competing for power and wealth through coercion.

In contrast, concepts like DEI elevate group identity replacing King’s vision of character with X’s vision of group power sharing.

Phrases like political correctness, actions like government censorship push against the vision of individual freedom and tolerance. It feels like we have left the path of individual freedom with tolerance towards others and embraced an almost Orwellian concept of a society managed by an elite group for “the greater good”.

We need to return to making America Great….Again. We need to back away from the slow loss of individualism in favor of a society managed by an army of bureaucrats. We need government protecting individuals from having their rights infringed upon, not being the source of infringement.

What made America great was our aspirations what we have lost is MLK’s dream.