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This is honestly an extremely complex question that I feel too many people aren't actually doing any heavy lifting to get to their answer. You're asking when America was at it's best, which you define as when it most upheld it's values, which is realistically an objectionable definition anyway. But what are our values? There's not that much agreement on that. You can 'look to the constitution' but not everyone reads it the same way or even respects it. There are people who want to effectively eliminate the second amendment and while I think most Democrats are a great deal more moderate than Fox would have you think, Hillary Clinton has mentioned how effective gun control was in Australia, which is about as second amendment as it gets. Not to mention how many people think freedom of religion means religion is a do whatever you want card, but usually only THEIR religion. The Bible says nothing about serving items for what is considered in Christianity to be a sinful ceremony yet that should be protected, but who's going to argue that Muslims should be able to kill infidels, which the Quran does say quite specifically that this is ok. Not to mention most people's views on free speech are frankly pretty inconsistent.
The truth is, I don't think America's values are especially prominent in any meaningful way. At best, the most agreed upon definition is the ideals of democracy and freedom. Both are pretty vague, particularly the latter, and I say, is there a time when these were not being valued? When have we said anything bad about democarcy? And freedom? While some would argue back and forth on us constantly losing freedom, I don't think that any genuine freedom has actually been lost in the long run. You might be against Obamacare and background checks, but at the end of the day, do these things really make you unfree? Because interestingly enough, many feel that guns being easily obtainable and healthcare being virtually unattainable for some is a limitation of freedom as well. And both sides do have pretty damn compelling arguments.
Personally, I don't think there is an answer to this question. There have been bumps in the road, but this isn't recent. It's easy to think that it is when the two likely nominees to the only two parties we care about for some reason leave us with picking a sociopathic liar and a different, slightly louder and more orange sociopathic liar, but honestly, it's nothing new. Jim Crowe was supremely un-American, and a reaction to something most would say IS American; giving a group that had previously been disenfranchised liberty. But Jim Crowe didn't last. And I'm confident that whatever is happening now won't last either, because the impending authoritarian states we are about to live in, rather it's under Clinton or Trump, will soon be despised by the masses who have all the hopes and dreams their candidate promised them crushed and never come true. And when that day comes, we'll do what we've always done and make America better than it was before. We'll make mistakes along the way, as we always do, but these mistakes should be celebrated if for one reason only; it means we did something.
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