The Capitol building is not the symbolic heart of American capitalism… historically that has been Wall Street and New York was a “free state” from the beginning.

The US Capitol has been the symbol of democracy. At our inception as a nation democracy was largely a “concept” with the closest thing being the monarchy of England with a Parliament that exercised power to restrain its king.

Our founding fathers boldly established a nation with a Constitution that guaranteed rights and the ability for power to rest with the people. It was not perfect. We had slavery, women could not vote, certain groups like gay couples could not marry, Native Americans could not be citizens. But with the Declaration of Independence and subsequent Constitution, that not only declared that all men were created equal, but had unalienable rights from God not subject to government suppression and civil rights guaranteed by government and not subject to being taken away… our nation began the journey that has lasted more than 220 years and led to the greatest nation in the world when measured by economic power and civil rights for all its citizens.

We remain the leading nation with respect to civil rights in that unlike other nations whose “civil rights” are the product of government legislation and subject to change… our civil rights are part of our governance document such that not even the government has the right to change them… hence attacks on our civil rights are subject to being ruled “unconstitutional” rather than simply “illegal”.

Time to stop judging our history by our present situation and recognize we only got to where we are now because of that history. And that history belongs to me, whose ancestors did not even arrive in this country until the early 20th century and to my wife who came here from Asia and inherited that history when she swore allegiance to our country and became a citizen, and to my daughter in law who came here from Africa when she transferred her citizenship from Zimbabwe to the US. Everyone “inherits” our history by virtue of their citizenship… the great, the good, the bad, and the ugly…

Like all humans and nations, we are best measured in the context of the time in which in lived… not in context of the values of the past or the future. Someday, people will condemn much of what we consider “good” today… why who knows… that they will is certain…