Re: Who are we?

Description: Senator Arlen Specter on reconciling what America stands for and its standing abroad.

Question: What does America stand for?

Transcript: I would say that the values that we articulate of freedom, opportunity, equality, justice, that there is a gap between what we say and even how we regard our actions in the United States with so many problems. Certainly there is an enormous gap with the way other nations view the United States as to what we stand for. I come down to the structure of our government, separation of powers and checks and balances. We eventually get it right because Americans are decent people, and we really do prize the concept of liberty, and equality, and opportunity, and justice. When the country was founded we had slavery. We certainly didn’t include or comprehend Thomas Jefferson’s statement in the Declaration of Independence of liberty. It took us more than a century to have votes for the women. So we didn’t have really an extensive democracy. We have problems today at Guantanamo. The constitutional right of habeas corpus. We have problems with immigration, but we are working with them. And ultimately I think we will get it right. And our structure of government with separation of powers and checks and balances is really, in a large sense, the greater symbol of what America stands for.

Question: Are America’s actions sometimes at odds with its values?

Transcript: Well we respond to threats of the moment. In World War II we _________ the Japanese – a very distasteful chapter in American history which we have since acknowledged and moved to correct. Nine-eleven shocked the country . . . obviously shocked the world too with thousands dying. And we’ve respond with a variety of measures such as worthless wiretaps in violation of the legislation in Congress. And then the periods cool, and we have reflections on it. And the matters are weighed by the Congress or weighed more by the courts, and we get it right. We correct the injustices of the past.

Recorded on: 7/4/07