Thoughts on Being an American

Man, I swear more than half of America has completely lost their minds. They are so gung ho for change, and I'll admit, President Bush's attitude toward illegal immigration makes me insane, that they don't stop to look where that "change" is headed. My parents taught me to be a responsible American citizen, carefully examining all candidates, their moral and public standards, their desire to serve the people rather than rule, their stance on issues critical to the salvation of United States of America as established by the Founding Fathers and the divinely inspired Constitution of the United States.

My father clearly recalled, as I have mentioned before, the morning he woke up and heard the Nazis goose-stepping through the cobblestone streets of his hometown of Amsterdam. He remembers looking up and seeing the sky filled with bombers after bombers after bombers, all painted with the terrifying symbol of the swastika. Therein began years of unmitigated terror, starvation and hell for my father and his small family.

Dad never hesitated to remind us that Hitler had been voted into office. Hitler had made sweet promises, spoken to the heart of a humiliated people who'd attempted to conquer the world many times before. He seemed the savior of the German people and instead he insured their complete and utter downfall.

I grew up in a home where freedom was valued, responsibility was taught and the need for wisdom and resilience instilled in my heart. And I look around America today and see her standing on the precipice of complete and utter ruin. Not from an enemy without, but from the enemy within who longs for the complete and utter rule of communism and the fall of this precious Constitution that I love so much. I know not where to turn. I know not what to do. I feel as Chicken Little crying of a falling sky, and yet I look around and see Constitutional freedoms eroded, candidates being chosen based on their looks rather than their integrity and willingness to serve the American people, and a nation following the siren call of change without asking what that change might be. Awake, my friends. This is not the time to step back and say, "Nothing I do can make a difference."

We were blessed and privileged to be born citizens of this great nation and it is our responsibility to protect her, from within and without.

• Those who call the Constitution archaic are our greatest enemies.
  
• Those who wish to regulate that which should be free enterprise are our greatest enemies. Those who would take from us our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms are our greatest enemies.
  
• Those whose pretty words and promises fall from untried minds are our greatest enemies.
• Those who tell us to listen to them, for they know better than we do are our greatest enemies.
• Those who ridicule and denigrate our great troops are our greatest enemies.
• Those who rob us of our basic Constitutional rights are our greatest enemies.
  

Even if discomfort is the end result. Even if we must fight for this nation to the bitter end. Even if we must live in poverty a little longer, do we really want to the right to dream, followed by the right to put that dream into practice, taken away from us.

When my father was 69-years-old he decided he wanted to start working again. With a bucket and a squeegee Dad went out and started washing windows. He worked hard, completed his work meticulously and with great integrity, and within months was bringing in several thousand a month. Had he not been taken from us by an insidious and excruciating death brought about by signet ring adenocarcinoma, my parents would have been completely out of debt by now.

Before he was brought low by this cancer, my father was speaking with some Dutch tourists who'd come to visit his little corner of Colorado. When he told them what he did for a living and how it came about, they marveled and told him he never would have been allowed to do that in Holland, not at his age. Another great thing about America.

I feel so privileged and blessed to be an American. I live in a land where my ancestors sacrificed to make sure I was free to speak what I see and feel, worship according to the dictates of my own conscience, to keep and bear arms that we might always protect ourselves, to vote out of office those who betray us, to do any type of work I want, as long as I am willing to work hard enough.

When "friends" outside of America tell me how hated we are I simply shrug my shoulders. Do I care? No, I do not. It is always to America the world turns when their decisions have brought them to their lowest and they must be freed by American soldiers. It is always to America the world turns when disaster strikes, crying "Why do you take so long to respond?" It is always to America the world turns when hunger becomes so devastating that certain death awaits. It is always to America the world turns when freedom is threatened and the wholesale slaughter of a nation's people becomes so great the world finally notices.

I am fiercely proud of America and I will honor my father's memory and my mother's teaching by standing for the Constitution of the United States of America, standing for our military, standing for Constitutional rights, standing for all that I believe in . . . free enterprise and market. I will fight for those men and women I believe will best represent me in Washington, D.C. and I will maintain a dialog with those men and women so that they may fully understand the issues important to me and where I stand. I will be true to the sacrifices my family has made since they first stepped on American soil in the 1500s.

I am an American and will not fail her.