Those who cry “Love it or leave it!” don’t seem to realize that to love the U.S. is to want to see it grow and improve, and that is only accomplished by change. So, when we criticize, we try to do so constructively, not destructively, and with the hope that we can make our country better, stronger, and greater. We truly want to be that “shining city on the hill,” the place of comfort and solace to the world, the embodiment of our ideal society.
No one has expressed this quite as eloquently as Edward R. Murrow in a 1954 broadcast on the demagogue Senator Joe McCarthy, presented here. It is also notable that the chief counsel for McCarthy was Roy Cohn, the very same lawyer who was mentor and personal lawyer to Donald Trump.