Finding America

When we think about America today do we truly considers ourselves a part of it? Do we truly look around and feel that sense of belonging and pride? Or do we simply live the lives we have, moving from day to day within the sphere of our own influence without much thought of what we are? Do we even know what we are? I guess that opens up a whole host of answers depending on us as individuals. Am I merely a hard-working family man struggling to get by as are so many others in these difficult financial times? Am I a disabled veteran whose career was cut short so that he might in the end find the love of his life? Am I a frustrated taxpayer, a worried father, a loving husband, the head of a household below the poverty line, am I America?

I am not nearly arrogant enough to believe that I represent the cross section of society, but is it really necessary to have so much in common in order to be the same? Is not America the great melting pot? The place in the world where we are free to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the place where we are not limited by the situations of our birth, but by the work we are willing to put into the pursuit of our dreams. Are not the richest among us, the most successful and hard-working, the most highly educated, and influential a piece of America? Are not the blue collar factory workers laid off in tough economic times, praying for what work a high school diploma will garner not a piece of America? The teacher, the lawyer, the homeless, the police officer, the soldier, and the fast food worker are all a piece of what America is. Yet in this great tapestry there are those who would use these differences as a way to power. As a way to divide and gain advantage.

I like many of you look at what has happened in this country over the last ten years and wonder what it has become. I wonder if the crooked politicians, bankers, lobbyists, unions, special interests, and judges truly have the power to dictate what America is. I wonder if the Republic can stand when "the will of the people" has simply become a catch phrase like "the greater good" and "equality" and "tolerance" in order to justify a transformation we do not desire. I wonder if America will become Europe, trapped in a vicious cycle of socialist policies that have ruined economies and lives. I wonder if it will become China where information is control by the powerful to maintain that power. I wonder what America will be, and will it still be us. Will it still be the melting pot, the city on a hill, the source of freedom, not of outcomes but of opportunity, will it still be a place where the dream is possible.

A dread fills my heart even having to ask these questions, because in the end America should not be changing. Are the rights upon which we were founded alterable? Are the freedoms we enjoy some fluid law subject to whims of political movements? Or should they be the solid foundation upon which we can build our lives? If we are to find America we must look not at the present or the future but to what made us the way we are. We must look to those things that enabled us to get this far. America is not the sum of our differences, it is the freedom to have those differences, it is the freedom to pursue the dream without being hindered by the government, for government is not the source of our comfort and our rights it should be the protector of them.

In the end I guess America should not be what we are, but what it is that allows us to be what we wish to be. It is what we wish to leave our children, and the struggle to find America is a responsibility of those who truly wish to be a part of it and love it for what it protects not what it gives.