"The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” Thomas Paine
By: Linda Case Gibbons
America stood there and it was truly heartbreaking to see. Her shoes were scuffed, her hair standing up in uncombed tufts.
This formerly immaculate woman was wearing a shabby dress and I know for a fact that there were smudges of dirt on her skirt and the cuffs of her blouse, although she tried to tuck the soiled patches away.I hadn’t seen America for a while and was shocked when I saw her. This is not the America I remembered.
"What’s happened to you, America? It hasn’t been that long since you were the strong, confident woman I know you to be!”
"Six years,” she answered wearily, as she lowered herself into a chair, placing the placards she held on the floor beside her.
One said, "In God We Trust,” the other I recognized as Thomas Jefferson’s words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident...” I saw a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution peeking out from the bag she had resting against the chair.
"I find myself running double time,” she said, "I carry these,” she said gesturing to her bag of placards, "but these don’t work anymore and frankly I’m exhausted from trying to keep the country at its very best.”
"I thought it was a good thing,” she said, absently arranging her skirts around her, "electing our first black president. I was so proud of our country, as I always have been, but now all I am is disappointed.
"I hate to say it, but now I think it made people concentrate more on the color of his skin and less on his character. That is not how America does things,” she said, and I saw a tear in the corner of her eye.
"And the color of your skin and your religion is becoming more of an issue as time goes by during these years. This is not the America I know.
She lowered her head and picked at a thread in the flag she was carrying.
"But now, the country has changed in ways that are not at all good.
"So many Americans have nothing good to say about their country now, hate it actually. I can tell that by the words they use and the things they do.
"And I see a decided lack of courage, responsibility and honesty in its leaders,” she said. "I see leaders fighting for economic slavery for its citizens, inequity among its citizen and mediocrity, and I shudder. I wonder: Can I survive?
"I think back to past presidents and people willing to die for their country. Loving America always was the starting point.
"Through it all, from the very beginning, God was at the center. I don’t see that today and it saddens me,” she said.
"It was reported to me the other day that an elementary school teacher had placed signs up in the classroom that said ‘God is dead!’ My goodness! An elementary school!
"Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were good men, patriots. They were pioneers in their efforts to end slavery in the beginning of the country. I don’t know if you know that. It’s not spoken about very often, especially nowadays.
"Today there is a fierce determination by some to rewrite history, depicting our forefathers as scoundrels, flawed and unworthy. This is taught in the classroom! There is an anger towards them and I don’t know why.”
"How have things gotten this bad?” I asked. That was when she raised her head, alert and poised for battle.
"There is a concerted effort to undermine the country, politically, financially, spiritually and in every way, little by little, in small ways that add up to the ruination of all we hold dear. What is happening in our country the past few years is wrong in so many areas.”
And off she went with her examination of America’s decline. She had obviously given this a lot of thought.
"There are no role models to whom we can turn today. Bad behavior is rewarded and good behavior is punished. Government agencies are allowed to persecute states, people, using their power to silence voices.
"Rewards are given out to those who are undeserving after they prove their unworthiness. Certain groups and people are shamelessly favored over others by the government, moral faults are overlooked in a selective way, excellence is discouraged in every sector of our lives, and America itself is severely criticized, most often by its own leaders.”
She proceeded to count on her fingers the points she was making.
"Hillary ‘falls down’ at home, gets hospitalized, and no one dare ask what happened. Is she sick? Forget ‘should she,’ but can she run for president because of her health? No one asks.
"The president of the United States is missing for 12 hours during the murders in Benghazi and no one asks what happened.
"Julianne Moore gets an Emmy for portraying a flawed Sarah Palin for HBO, and CNN and NBC plan a "prettified” mini-series on Hillary Clinton.
"Speaker of the House John Boehner has a new white flag stitched up for him after he used the old one so much it is now tattered and torn. But at least he hasn’t cried in a while.
"Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice get ‘Great American’ awards, for ‘public service of others whose work reflects distinctive leadership qualities,’ and the families of those killed in Benghazi get to have their family members dead.
"Bill Clinton gets Father of the Year award, while his 33-year-old daughter sits at his side, and Monica Lewinski tries to live down knowing Bill Clinton.”
"These are the little, but corrosive things,” she smiled. "But the end result is tragic. Now America does not stand for anything. Our "handshake” means nothing here and around the world.
"The real tragedy is what we don’t do. Christians are killed in Egypt, churches destroyed, nuns paraded through the streets with no word of outrage from the U.S. president, while Nidal Hasan kills 13 Americans in Fort Hood and has it called "workplace violence.
"Hundreds of children are killed with nerve gas near Damascus in Syria’s bloody civil war and America’s president orders U.S. intelligence agencies to ‘urgently gather’ evidence about the attack.
"I see excellence being discouraged. Just this week a little nine-year old was discouraged from a book-reading contest because he read too much! He was told he should move aside, not participate because he made the other children feel bad! Imagine!
"I see entrepreneurship, the backbone of this country being discouraged while leaders say they are bolstering it. I see a plethora of laws specifically designed to destroy those small businesses, laws which, shockingly, none of the country’s leaders seem to have read much less understand.
"I see a concerted effort to break the spirit of the middle class, systematically attacking religion and family and heaping taxes upon those people who work and produce.
"And I see the poor and students and ethnic groups being used for political advantage and a cynically manipulated healthcare law that does everything but care for health, and I am appalled.
"Do not misunderstand. I have seen corruption. I have seen political bias, but this, this is different. This is dangerous.
"Why? Because I see a disregard for the rule of law and the law perverted to serve political goals.
"I see laws imposed without any consideration for the will of the people, and I see laws ignored. I see unconstitutional edicts issued, by-passing the branches of the government which our Constitution established, favoring the few and punishing the many. I see our Constitution being shredded.
"None of this is for the good of this country and its people.
"And I look at our standing in the world and at our economic viability. Then I ponder why those in power seek to enslave us to China, carelessly running up debts that cannot be repaid to a country which wishes us nothing but ill. Our cities are going bankrupt! Who ever heard of such a thing?
"At the very beginning of our country’s history we fought to break free from the shackles that bound us to England. Remember? We vowed never again to be beholden to any man, and yet here we are.
"Ask yourselves, at this time in our history, why is religious intolerance and racial discord revisiting our land? It is. Ask youselves ‘why,’ and ‘from whom’ does this come?
"Why are there fewer and fewer in our government who seek truth and tell the truth? Today, everyday citizens expect their leaders to lie as a matter of course and unfortunately, their leaders do, destroying the very bedrock upon which our country rests.
"But I still see courage.
"Take, for example, movie owner Ike Boutwell, a Korean War vet who refused to show "The Butler” because it starred "Hanoi Jane” in the role of First Lady Nancy Reagan.”
"I just really think it’s a slap in the face to have a person of treason portray a patriotic lady, Mrs. Reagan. I just think that is throwing gas on the fire,” he said. "In life, you’ve got to stand for something and that’s where I stand. It makes me feel that I’m honoring those who died for this country.”
"And when government officials lie to the mother of a soldier killed in Benghazi, I applaud that mother who will not let go of the fight to find out what happened to her son, who says straight out that the government lied to her and that the secretary of state looked her in the eyes and lied to her face.
"These people who speak their minds are patriots and they are not afraid.
"And we must not be afraid either.
"I witness with regret the spectacle of government officials steering this country into the ground, who lie all too often nowadays for all the world to see, who spy on its citizens, for all the world to see, who are silent too often and tell the citizens of this country not to succeed, to settle for less and then tell us this is the ‘new normal’
"But they are wrong. Mediocrity, hatred and "the new normal” of lack and despair may be some man’s dream, but it is not the dream that created America.
"So read the Constitution of the United States of America and then vow to let no man destroy it. That is America’s dream.
"After all, you’ve got to stand for something.”
Hold the line, America.