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I was raised to revere the stories of the Americans before us who've sacrificed so much in order to get us where we are today. They worked long, hard, back breaking days in the fields, and grueling hours in dark factories for just pennies. During The Great Depression, people took in their neighbors and fed them and gave them a place to rest because it was the right thing to do. They marched and died in the streets to fight for dignity and basic human rights. They laid down their lives in foreign lands, offering all that they've been given in this life so that our nation as a whole could prosper, many times while their own families struggled on without their mother or father.
It astounds me that so many Americans before us were willing to sacrifice for a people who've allowed themselves to become so utterly unworthy. We've seen the selfish, mean, petty people who use freedoms won at the expense of others to jeer at old ladies in wheel chairs and coldly admonish tired and struggling single mothers to pick up a second and even third job. What kind of people are unwilling to give a few measly dollars from their paychecks to ensure that their fellow Americans have the same quality of life they do? God forbid a few dollars of our hard-earned money goes to feed a child, or provide affordable health care for everyone, instead of towards buying shit we don't need at Wal-Mart.
Does anyone even understand what being 'American' means anymore? Being American comes with a very clear set of ideals that are the responsibility of each of us to try and implement during our lifetimes. We've failed many times as a nation in holding up those ideals, but we've come to the point where we are in danger of completely tossing them out. THIS IS NOT "AMERICA"! I absolutely refuse to believe that countless Americans sacrificed their lives for ideals that were the very core of our foundation, 'The American Dream', only for it to start unfolding as the nightmare we are witnessing today.
When did kindness, compassion and our responsibility to our fellow human beings become dirty words? People fear, 'socialism' and claim they are even willing to take up arms to ensure, 'it doesn't happen here', but they don't have a problem letting their neighbor's child die for lack of health care. My God, what have we become? Truthfully, the very thing they fear- which is really, 'Communism', only comes into being because people start showing apathy, and eventually disdain for the hungry, sick and poor among us, and so we get revolutions.
They need not fear 'socialism' at all if they weren't the kind of people that only do the right thing if strongly compelled. That is the irony- there would be no need for 'socialism' or social programs if each of us met our own basic responsibilities in dealing with our fellow man. Those who don't leave holes for the rest of us to fill, and social programs have been a very good way of filling those holes. We have been left so many hints on how to thrive as a species: Matthew 25. The Golden Rule. These words of wisdom serve to strengthen the threads that bind us, strengthening each of us individually in the process, yet there are people on this planet eager to tear at those threads, and if we allow enough of them to do it, the entire tapestry will start to unravel, because too many of us don't understand that we're all in this together.
What we all should be fearing is the hardening of our hearts, the poisoning of our souls and the loss of our humanity. History has show us that much better individuals than what we've been seeing at the 'tea parties' and town halls are collectively capable of exterminating millions of human beings quite systematically and efficiently, within an alarmingly short period of time. I shudder to think what the people who seem to be coming out of the woodwork of late are capable of, and worse, if their ideology will be able to finish worming its way into our collective mind as it has been diligently doing for a few decades now, thanks to the arrogant and misguided among us who tell us it is okay to subjugate to and embrace the worst in our natures (Falwell, Limbaugh, Beck).
I'm tired of seeing the twisted, ugly, mottled, hate-filled faces screeching regurgitated Beck-Lim"baaaah"ian bile on my tv. Why does the media insist on giving the worst of human behavior front-and-center stage to air their views? When did we allow this by greedily watching? What has happened to the voices of the strong, the noble, the sane among us?
We need to start speaking out, each of us. We need to boldly put forth our vision of America and to make sure our voice is heard loud and clear. We cannot turn back now. Not when those before us had so much faith that those following them would someday fulfill the hopes and dreams they helped push just a little bit forward and carried like a fire within their hearts (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, JFK, MLK, Teddy, etc, etc, etc.). Before their short time on this planet was finished, they were so careful to make sure that brightly burning torch was passed down from generation to generation. We can't let that flame die.
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