A few years back a friend of mine was shot in the chest just for walking in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a Marine and he was good at what he did. So good in fact that he served three tours in Iraq before he came home, only to die within five miles of the place he called home in the country that he was willing to die to protect. After I left Army ROTC he had asked me if it had been because I had stopped believing in what we as soldiers were being asked to do. At the time of course my answer was no but now I have to wonder if that is still true.
I look back on the past few years at everything I have done and everyone that I have met. I see the causes that I have rallied to and the society that has been raised up around me. It is with a heavy and longing heart that I revise my previous answer. I have stopped believing in what our soldiers are asked to do. Not because I believe the war is wrong or because I think the soldiers who put their lives on the line are wrong but because I believe that this society and the people who live in it are no longer worth their protection.
Long gone are the days when values like honor, dignity and loyalty were the currency of the realm. Today if something doesn’t have the possibility to bring fame or fortune it isn’t worth the energy it takes to turn away from it. This egotistical mentality that has been adopted by the vast majority of mankind is nothing but a slap in the face of every soldier worldwide.
Everyday there is another politician who thinks they know what’s best for this country making decisions that serve their own agendas. Whether their names are Bush, Pelosi, Cheney or Obama they are all the same. The worst part about it is that they have the general population of this country so cowed that there is no one to stand against them and those who would stand up to face them have their own agendas or are too insignificant to have any effect.
What happened to the democracy that this country was built on? What happened to the people choosing what was right for them? That option doesn’t exist anymore. There are no politicians who support the will of the people that they were elected to serve and I am not even sure that the people have any will left. Everyday it gets worse. We are inundated with media that is specifically engineered to terrify anyone who pays attention and lull the rest into a mind numbing ignorance. Between half-truths, lies and omissions today’s news media simply don’t do anything to allow the people the knowledge they need to control the manner in which their country is controlled. All for the sake of selling more newspapers, getting more website hits and making new viewers. And it is all for the sake of money.
So what happened to honor, dignity, loyalty and all of the values that those who built this country held so dear? Has it been too long since we last remembered that freedom isn’t free? Have we become so desensitized that all we care about are meager acts that only serve to supply a few with meaningless glory that they have no claim to? I remember a group of traitorous people who decided to stand up against the needs of one man and declared:
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”[1]
When these words once again mean something to the people of this country then maybe we will once again be worthy of the protection and sacrifice of our brothers and sisters who volunteer their lives in service to a country who has forgotten what it is like without them. I only pray that we remember soon before the damage we have done to our great nation becomes irreversible.
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