Lake Forest High School is remarkably good at what it does. It has taught me how to write a DBQ, analyze the works of Shakespeare, and derive the rocket equation.

But there is one lesson that is more difficult to teach than all the others. It is being true to one’s ideals, and it took no less than seven years in the Boy Scouts of America to teach it to me.

The Scout’s life is defined by the ideals to which they have committed themself. They are called to be ever trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent; to do their duty to God and country; to always be prepared; to help other people at all times. 

My beloved Troop 42 runs food drives, distributes parade books to each Lake Bluffer before the Fourth of July, and participates in flag ceremonies. Last month, we helped a student committee from the high school keep our Veterans Day ceremony alive. In all things, the community and the country come first. It’s about cheerful, selfless service.

The Scouts taught me that it is my task to serve America just as it is that of a marine, or a civil engineer, or a president. I have to lend a hand to keep this grand experiment afloat. I have to uphold the civic ideals that make this country a light to all the world.

But now it seems that that country no longer cares to uphold those ideals. The light is hidden under the bushel basket.

On November 8, a student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology died after falling from a parking garage. His name was Chow Tsz-lok. He was 22 years old, his life was just beginning.

The people of Hong Kong have been protesting since June against a Beijing government that has grown increasingly determined to impose its authority on the city by whatever means necessary. Two people have died and thousands have been wounded.

At the same time, the People’s Republic of China seeks to install one of its cronies as the next Dalai Lama when the Tibetan people clearly want no part of it. At the same time, the People’s Republic of China endeavors to displace and dispossess the Uighur people of Xinjiang. At the same time, the People’s Republic of China rolls out a social credit system that regardless of any good intentions reduces the republic’s people to numbers in the cloud.

The Yemeni Civil War began in 2015 when Iranian-backed rebels overthrew the Saudi-backed government. More than ten thousand civilians have died since then, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported that 14.3 million human beings are in acute need of humanitarian aid.

The Republic of Turkey introduced the world to modern genocide in 1914 when it began a nine-year campaign to slaughter one and a half million Armenians. Now Turkey marches against the Kurds, brave warriors who fought alongside America and her allies to defeat the Caliphate yet were abandoned by the United States beginning in October.

And what does America do? Offer thoughts and prayers, in the case of China, or chunter vainly in the case of Yemen or Turkey.

Yes, we are now engaged in a great trade war with China. Yes, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to demand tougher sanctions as punishment for the treatment of the Uighurs. Yes, the United States called for the United Nations to decide the Dalai Lama’s successor rather than allow China to wholly hijack Tibetan culture.

But we are now negotiating to end the trade war. The National Basketball Association rushed to do damage control when one of its general managers said what any true American would say: “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”

Yes, the Congress of this great union voted to end our weapons sales to the sadistic fiefdom of Saudi Arabia on account of its actions in Yemen. But our enlightened president vetoed that resolution.

Yes, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide after every U.S. state save Mississippi did the same. But the gifted statesman Lindsey Olin Graham blocked the Senate from doing the same.

To be fair, this country has sanctioned those suspected of killing the Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi. We have stated our support for those brave souls protesting the tyrannical Iranian regime. 

But these are all just words, empty shells of actions that should be. Our foreign policy has degraded to bombast, to speeches and token condemnations, to carrier redeployments and carpet-bombing campaigns conducted against countries that have no Internet.

It happened under Clinton. We ignored the Rwandan genocide until it was far too late.

It happened under Obama. We drew red line after red line only to pretend that everything was hunky-dory as Bashar-al-Assad deployed chemical weapons against his own people.

And now it happens under Trump. It seems that no president can escape the gyrating prison of meaningless babble, the comedy of sycophants that is our official foreign policy.

President Trump imposed a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign on Iran. Why not on China? Why not on Saudi Arabia? Why not on Turkey? Why does this shining city on the hill smite some demons with the heavenly fires but leave untouched the other corruptions that prey upon the meek?

I do not consider myself a fool. I am a Co-Secretary General of the Model United Nations team and hopefully know something about foreign policy.

It is called pragmatism. China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey: these are powers with which we can strike a bargain. They are stable. The enemies of our enemies are our friends, the old saying goes. 

But I cannot recall for the life of me a time when the Scouting code allowed me to topple that ever-inconvenient pillar of trustworthiness lest I think myself unkind. Ideals are ideals, and laws are laws; they are immutable, forged in the fiery furnace of the bleeding heart, tempered by passionate conviction, sharpened on the whetstone of a strong and active faith in the better angels of our nature, never to be broken.

We are flawed. But perfection is overrated, for a thing that is perfect is a thing that has ended; that’s what the word perfect means.

We are not angels. We are something far better: human beings with hearts to feel and minds to know. We have crossed the trackless ocean wastes, journeyed to the darkest depths of the Pacific, summited high and icy Everest, shattered the sound barrier, gazed down on our little blue marble from above. We can dream.

I dream now that I stand on the bow of a ship rolling through the mist. Liberty Island comes into view, and upon that key in New York Harbor there stands a colossus bearing no ill-tempered sword but an eternal flame. Lady Liberty tramples underfoot the twisted tortured forms of the greedy and the cruel, the dictators and the schemers, those who would do ill to people of good will.

It is far better to try and fail than not to try at all. We will not always succeed. But we can at least make the attempt. We can end our petty squabbling with ourselves and our allies. We can end our sycophantic trafficking with those for whom justice, liberty, and human rights are cute fairy-tales to be scrapped the moment they become inconvenient. We can end our cowering under the bushel basket and let our fiery ideals shine forth as a beacon for all the world.

Let America be the shining city on the hill. Let her stand upon Liberty Island. Let her guide this human race from this Terran spring to the infinite resounding seas of space and time. Let her make this world a monument to humanity’s triumph or a memorial of its failure.

Let America be the orphan from the Caribbean who sails to New York and invents a national bank. Let America be the blind-deaf girl who graduates college and fights for women’s suffrage. Let America be the skinny kid with a funny name who becomes the first black president. Let America be the little girl who skips in the street and sings:

“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”