Norfolk Daily News: Fortenberry offers his take on America

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By Michael Avok

After decades of societal changes in the United States and all of the internal arguments about what the country should be, the world still views America as, well, America.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry told members of the Norfolk Rotary Club on Tuesday that despite a preoccupation with pop culture and squabbling over health care, the U.S. is still regarded as a reference point on the world map and moral compass.

Fortenberry, a member of the House state and foreign operations subcommittee, made stops in several cities in his 1st District on Tuesday to provide an update on a project to create a World War II memorial as a gift to France.

But the conversation quickly moved into a self assessment of America.

"There is a great philosophical stress in our society," Fortenberry said. "You and I (Nebraskans) are holding a more traditional world view. Other people … have rejected that norm and want to throw that all away. They find that liberating. They see that as freedom. We see more order, that rules and regulations, norms of our behavior, are actually for our own good."

Those differences may seem as if the country is sending mixed messages to the world, he said, but most nations still see the U.S. as a constant.

"You would like to think that the United States projects itself in a unified fashion," Fortenberry said. "Ideals, principles and ordered liberty based on a single idea -- human dignity, from which flows our rights and our mechanism of government. That is the core value of America that I think is projected in spite of all the debate that is going on.

"It doesn't confuse people as much as you think it would."

The lure of living in a place where you go where you want to go and see what movies you want to see is important, especially to young people from other countries, Fortenberry said.

"Underlying that is a sense of freedom and respect for the individual," he said. "Even when the individual, from our perspective, may be wrong, they still have the freedom to do what they want. That is not the same in other societies."

Americans, though, must face the questions of who we are as a nation and where we are going as a people, Fortenberry said.

The key word in forming the answers, he said, is security.

How do we keep ourselves safe? National security. How do we create opportunity? Economic security. How do we protect family and community life? Family and faith security, he said.

"New power centers have sprung up around the world," Fortenberry said. "The idea of the traditional enemy being in a different-colored uniform behind a demarked area called a nation is no longer the case."

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