What America This?

When people scoff at our Constitution and refer to it as a "living document" with room for improvement, all I can do is shake my head in shame at my fellow Americans. This document is heretofore the closest thing to perfection ever written, that is until we got our modern hands on this work of brilliance.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

This was the legacy passed down to us by the most revered and honorable of men, men who we should thank with our very being, every day of our lives.

The same brave men who gained our independence from abuse and tyranny. They saw the future, and the past, and they desired nothing more than for Americans to think for themselves, see injustice, and correct it accordingly. They watched while British soldiers commandeered private homes to garrison their troops, hanged those who were even suspected of revolutionary complicity, shut down printing presses, and forced Americans to deliver unjust tax revenues to an ungrateful and mad country who treated us as if we were secondary citizens.

Those brave "colonials", as they were so scathingly referred to, sacrificed with their lives and their health, and threw their heart into the very freedoms we shamefully take for granted, and have blindly enjoyed for many decades. We have since seen pain and suffering in slavery, internment camps during WWII, and the devastating losses on September 11, 2001.

However, because of the far seeing eye of our Founding Fathers, we avoided much of the pain and suffering of other nations, and enjoyed an almost unbelievable prosperity before unheard of, and our successes have had long reaching fingers that subtley penetraded every nation in the world. Perhaps those nations didn't always appreciate our efforts, perhaps they read a deeper, darker meaning in our acts, but they weren't opposed to reaping the rewards and benefits of our honest, if childlike, pursuit of justice.

We, as a People, with a representative government, haven't always been in the right. Maybe we have tried to be the watchdog of the world, with our eye on the prize of equality and democracy for everyone. We may be idealistic, believing the world could be a better place if only...if only.

Are those not the saddest words in the English language? If only we hadn't turned our backs when abuses of women were occurring in the Muslim world, if only we hadn't ignored the atrocities that were happening in Africa until it was too late, if only we had fiercely destroyed the radicals enmeshed within our own society like Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn, the Black Panthers, and the hippies of the 60's. If only.

Today we're faced with another Great Depression, where tent cities are springing up like raging rivers, unstoppable and relentless, as in war torn countries; or countries devastated by the wrath that nature somtimes unleashes in the form of powerful natural disasters. This is our country now. The pain of my fellow man is my pain. When I see entire families lose everything, with no help in sight since they're merely following in the mournful footsteps of the millions who've trod the same worn path before them, my heart wants to reach out to them with everything I have. My hands, however, faced with overwhelming odds, are tied. Who else at this point can they turn to? Our government, which has become anything but representative of the People? Each other?

When faced with a government who is willing to sell us to the highest bidder, be it oil, environmental terrorists, Islamic terrorists in general, taxes, fear, intimidation, back room deals, bribes, and teleprompters with smarmy lies, what comes next? Another Revolution? But the answer has always been right beneath our noses.

Our Founding Fathers, who wanted something better for us; who fought and died for us. Those men aren't just our Founding Fathers. They are our Fathers. We are their offspring. We owe them for what they've given us with their blood, their sacrifice, and their hardship. We are all that we are for their diligence in the care of the lives of people they would never know. May I be willing to sacrifice myself in the same way for my children, and theirs, and those that will follow. I'm humbled by their seemingly predestined love for me, for us all, despite never having an inkling that some day we would exist, and that once again we would be fighting their battle with our words. Should I have to take up arms in another Revolution, I will remember those men who gave me the opportunity to do so, and pray that I am as brave as they, God Bless America, in all it's wonderful history and grandeur. I know mine enemy, and sadly the greatest threat is from within.