4th of july new york city
Why I Am Patriotic: A Love Letter to America
Today is the Fourth of July.
Independence Day. I awoke this morning to a country in which I can, if I choose, leave my front door unlocked at night without serious fear that my family or property will be harmed. Not everyone in America is this lucky. Certainly we did not start out this way.
My husband and I worked hard to get where we are today, but the fruit of our labors is protected by the rule of law. Thirty years ago, we had next to nothing. We were two young people with low paying jobs living well below the federal poverty level. At tax time, we didn’t pay taxes. The government gave us money.
And we made good use of the opportunity we were given. Now, both we and our two grown sons and their families are prosperous and secure.
I awoke this morning to a country in which women have control over their bodies, their education, their careers, and their personal lives. We need not fear being held down and mutilated simply for the crime of possessing female genitalia. Our daughters attend school with boys. They go on to graduate from college and postgraduate schools at greater rates than do our sons. Women enter and leave marriage freely; childbirth and motherhood need not be the inescapable consequences of biology: science and law have made them voluntary decisions. In the workplace, laws give us redress if we face discrimination. Truly, we are liberated in every sense of the word.
I awoke to a country awash in information.
It comes to my door each morning in the form of two newspapers which land with a reassuring “plop” in my driveway by 5 a.m. If I turn on my TV, over 300 channels await my delectation. Information of every kind is there for the taking: history, investigative journalism, opinion, discussion and debate, perspective on the day’s events. There are 6 computers in my home, all of them Internet-capable. No government filters what I see and hear. New York Times reporters release classified documents and jeopardize legitimate anti-terrorism programs without fear of jail. Comedians and musicians bait and insult the President of the United States at social occasions. But instead of being punished or rebuked for their boorish behavior they are celebrated; treated as though they had said something of consequence.
I awoke to a country in which citizens may write whatever they please no matter how critical of the government, the military, or the State, without fear. They will not be arrested, beaten, and condemned to hard labor for six years for the crime of disparaging the military. They need never see the pain and confusion in a little girl’s eyes as she wonders whether she will ever see her father again?
I awoke to a country in which young men and women are still unashamedly idealistic, in which they are passionately interested in debate and the free exchange of ideas. But more importantly, I awoke to a country in which our children are not all cynical, spoiled, and apathetic. It is a country where young people possess the courage and integrity to stand up for their beliefs:
these magnificent, overarching questions cannot Delphic, at least for me, the plain fact that signpost routine felt himself to be morally committed. i discovered this in his life story and in his surviving writings. again, not to romanticize him overmuch, but this is the wretch who would not let others be bullied in inculcate, who stuck up looking for his younger siblings, who was briefly a vegetarian and green party member because he couldn’t stand cruelty to animals or to the environment, a student who loudly defended native american rights and who challenged a myspace neo-nazi in an online contend in which the swastika-displaying antagonist finally admitted that he needed to rethink things. if i give the impression of a insult nerd here i do an one-sidedness. the whole shooting match that mark wrote was imbued with a great spirit of humor and tough-mindedness. here’s an excerpt from his “why i joined” statement: anyone who knew me preceding the time when i joined knows that i am quite hip and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in iraq. if you think the only freedom a living soul could get themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer recklessness or untouched obedience then about me the rarity (though there are countless predilection me). weigh that there are 19 year obsolete soldiers from the midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who take done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and distinct rights by placing themselves between iraqi voting lines and berserk religious fanatics.
And here’s something from one of his last letters home:
i was having a colloquy with a kurdish man in the bishopric of dahok (by myself and flatly safe) discussing whether or not the insurgents could be viewed as “freedom fi …
Related posts: Sir edmund hillary, Code geass r2 07, Bio regents prep, Playstation 3 firmware 2.17, Opeth watershed
