On Friday I bought a flag that proudly flies from our front porch. Since putting up the flag, I have noticed how many other houses have as well, more than I can ever remember seeing since 9/11. We watched the fireworks display at the lake and as we were waiting, at least three of the many pontoon boats floating by were sporting large American flags, some waving from the stern of the ship, some hung horizontally along the bow.
This holiday means so much more to me now, not just since marrying a soldier, but since realizing how fragile our freedoms really are, and how much of our national identity we've lost. One of Ronald Reagon's most famous quote talks about this, how freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction, that is must be fought for and maintained.
It must be fought for not just on battlefields, but in hearts and minds as well. America is not an everlasting framework, but an idea, the great experiment of human liberty. What makes America great is our recognition that rights and liberties do not flow from the government, but from God, that they are not granted by the state, but that they are inherent in our humanity and therefore equal in all mankind.
This was a radical idea at the time of America's founding, but it has created the most prosperous, generous and free country in the world.
A fellow blogger sent me an article that talks about trend seen recently in the treatment of the Jewish people in Europe, especially the Netherlands. It's alarming.
“Decoy Jew” is a new phrase in the Netherlands. Jews are no longer safe in major Dutch cities such as Amsterdam. Since 1999, Jewish organizations in the Netherlands have been complaining that Jews who walk the Dutch streets wearing skullcaps risk verbal and physical attacks by young Muslims. Being insulted, spat at or attacked are some of the risks associated with being recognizable as a Jew in contemporary Western Europe.
Last week, a television broadcast showed how three Jews with skullcaps, two adolescents and an adult, were harassed within thirty minutes of being out in the streets of Amsterdam. Young Muslims spat at them, mocked them, shouted insults and made Nazi salutes. “Dirty Jew, go back to your own country,” a group of Moroccan youths shouted at a young indigenous Dutch Jew. “It is rather ironic,” the young man commented, adding that if one goes out in a burka one encounters less hostility than if one wears a skullcap.
In an effort to arrest the culprits who terrorize Jews, the Amsterdam authorities have ordered police officers to walk the streets disguised as Jews. The Dutch police already disguise officers as “decoy prostitutes, decoy gays and decoy grannies” to deter muggings and attacks on prostitutes, homosexuals and the elderly. Apparently sending out the decoys has helped reduce street crime. The “decoy Jew” has now been added to the police attributes.
The deployment of “decoy Jews”, however, is being criticized by leftist parties such as the Dutch Greens. Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to provoking a crime, which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law.
Unfortunately, the situation in Amsterdam is not unique. Jews in other Dutch cities also regularly complain about harassment. So do Jews in neighboring countries.
On Monday, the Belgian newspaper De Standaard reported that large numbers of Jews are leaving Antwerp for America, Britain or Israel...
It is often said that the Jews are the canary in the coalmine. When the Jews feel compelled to leave, the light of freedom is being extinguished. Something is badly wrong when the police need to deploy “decoy Jews.” Once again, the specter of anti-Semitism is haunting Europe. If the Europeans do not stand with the Jews, they deserve no freedom themselves and cities such as Amsterdam and Antwerp will soon be Islamic cities."
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4470
I've absorbed, both from public school and through current culture, a feeling of shame for my country. I remember, ten years ago, being jealous of my Japanese boyfriend, jealous of his blatant nationalism and how that form of nationalism was acceptable to main steam or liberal thought. I felt clearly, under the same mainstream thought, that patriotism toward my own country was taboo, since America could only stand for corporate culture, excess and aggression.
But this is simply not true. Even now, we are one of the last ports in the storm for those who wish to escape religious or cultural persecution.
I'm not ashamed of my country any more and I won't apologize for being an American. Other Americans have fought and died to keep the ideas of liberty, and justice alive in the face of great darkness. I think of them often, those boys who died on the beaches of Normandy or obscure islands in the Pacific coasts. And earlier, those men who left their farms and homesteads to fight in their bare and bleeding feet because they believed that they were not the sons of a king or a government, but that they were the sons of liberty and that that was an idea worth dying for.
And it still is and I'll do all I can now that it is my turn to pass on freedom's torch. Even if all I can do is to continue to educate myself about our unique form of government; the Republic of the United States of America, and the great responsibility this places upon her citizens, that of educated involvement and a firm moral center. Even if all I can do is add my voice to a growing cry to return to the American values of common sense, fiscal responsibility, free market principles and a small, efficient government.
I'm not alone, my voice is just one of many. We have astounding obstacles in our way; we have an unthinkable amount of debt, a recession and an entrenched and greedy government that, no matter which political party, continues to expand and that no longer recognized the rule of law, including the Constitution.
But I'm not afraid. We've been in tough places before. As long as we don't forget our legacy and continue to get involved, we will pull through this. We can elect representatives who will actually defend and uphold the Constitution, who believe in limited government and have an actual plan about balancing the budget. We can remember and celebrate our unique American inheritance, one that, despite our mistakes, is defined by generosity, tolerance, and freedom.
"It is not the glory of the people of American that, while they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theater in favor of private rights and public happiness...Happily for America, happily we must trust for the whole human race, (the founders of the nation) pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annuals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate."
-James Madison,
God bless America.
