The Fight For America

I read a Veterans Day article recently that asked “Is America worth fighting for?”  I was shocked by the question.  I was concerned that it even needed to be asked.  The concept of “America” is truly exceptional.  That a country could design itself in such a way that it would value the individual’s rights and set up a system to protect those rights is largely unheard of in the history of mankind.  Now, did we do it perfectly?  No. But it has been a progressive attempt overall to do it right.

I think the article’s real concern was “have we abandoned those principles that we used to found the country.”  Are individual rights being sacrificed in the name of some form of political correctness?  Are self-reliance and family values a thing of the past?  Is government regulation of every facet of our lives the way a free country operates?  Are the inalienable rights to free expression, religion, privacy, and the pursuit of happiness being ever eroded in an attempt to control the overall image of what an American should look like and who Americans should be?

I’m not a big “Hawk” when it comes to wars.  I think war is pretty stupid and is the outcome of failed diplomacy in most cases (though there are exceptions.)  I do think America is worth fighting for, but that fight needs to be fought right now here at home, not by soldiers in the Middle East.  Who we are here in America is what is at stake, not who is threatening us from the outside.

Are we a free country that operates on the principle that the right to govern is derived from those governed?  Do we have a political system that fosters that with intelligent and informed voting by everyone.  Do we have a practical and effective way to remove leaders who do not foster that outcome.  And most of all, do we avoid a system that develops entrenched long term political leadership that is beholden to financial interests and power blocks that literally buy their votes with perks and lavish campaign funding.  And lastly, have we developed a society that looks to the public trough to care for them rather than the self-reliance that our founders believed in.

That America is worth fighting for!