I have been a
student of history my entire life. As
long as I can remember, I have always loved learning about American
history. I needed to know about the
country that my family had come to. A
country they came to for a new beginning, to give their children a chance to
have a life that they wanted for us. My
mother, an immigrant from Ireland, and my grandparents on my father’s side
coming from Scotland, they all came here with a dream of a promising future,
based on the history they had learned of America’s past. America’s story is as rich as any other
country, even though we have had such a short one in comparison with so many
other nations. However, the contents of
our short story can be compared to none other.
My compassion
for America’s history begins with its inception. Not within its birth do I mean—the
Declaration of Independence—but with its creation through the idea of what
America was. During the Colonial Era,
our land was inhabited by a wide array of people from all types of
livings. Colonials hailed here from
countries all over the world, skin colors were as plentiful as a rainbow,
languages and accents were as bountiful as the fish in the sea. There was the affluent as well as the poor,
the studious as well as the illiterate. Religious
institutions were a choice, instead of a mandate.
Whether our
fore-bearers were conscious of it, or oblivious—they were a part of an
amalgamation of something great, something that the world had not seen
yet. The American Idea was brooding out
of the society that so closely resembled it.
Borne out of the philosophies that shook the world in the Enlightenment,
America catapulted these notions into practice.
Individualism
borne from liberty.
Equality borne
from justice.
Responsibility
borne from self-government.
These ideals
pushed the colonials into a self-realization of the void of difference between
themselves and the foreign rulers that slowly lost their control over
them. Thomas Paine chose his words
carefully when he spoke of America having a chance to do what rarely had been
done before… to create a new world.
America’s history books do not teach the American Revolution in the way
that would do much justice to the event that transformed the world. The war was one for Independence, the
Revolution was in the materialization of the inception. A country of Equal Rights, Liberty, and
Individualism… Freedom is the word we know it as, today. And Since that moment, our history has been a
story of our nation’s struggle to bring that notion to fruition.
The great
society of freedom has had a checkered past, most would argue, and I would not
fight them on it. Our nation has had its
highs and lows without doubt. The Civil
War preceded the Reconstruction. Our
fight against Nazism preceded the Civil Rights Era and the Vietnam War. One could say easily that our country has
followed a direction of taking two steps forward, only to take one step back
through most of its history. And it is time that we change this habit now.
Our nation
created a society that banished hereditary aristocracy, only to allow it to
build a plutocracy in its stead. We
speak of being a government of the people, by the people, for the people—but we
currently hold a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich…
Our nation
created a society that strives for equality, only to continuously withhold Equality
from its people and not hold others to Justice.
In a time when sex, race, and sexual orientation hinder people from
Equal Rights, money and celebrity-ism allow others to act without regard for
laws and consideration for others.
Our nation
created a society that promoted Individualism, only to consistently fight to
take it away. America fought for
Independence not only for itself as a nation, but for the independence of its
people to choose the lives they wished for themselves, to choose the beliefs
they felt belonged to themselves, to possess the Individualism that true
Liberty provides.
And the promise
that was provided in this country was simple.
If you work hard in this “Land of Opportunity” you will achieve the
American Dream. But how true does this
promise hold? Unemployment rates skyrocket while corporations send jobs away
from our shores. Tax systems exploit the
middle class while the mega-rich pay a fraction of what would be a Fair
Share. Every year, the amount of
families in poverty continues to grow, the amount of families considered in
“low-income” levels increases, creating new records surpassing the previous
record from the year before. Meanwhile,
America continues to break new records every year in the amounts of
millionaires and billionaires.
But there is no
wonder to why we possess a government of the rich, by the rich, for the
rich. One only needs to look to the
voting habits in this country…
Of eligible
voters making $150,000 or more a year, over eighty percent voted in the last
election.
Of eligible
voters making less than $50,000 a year, less than fifty-seven percent voted in
the last election.
The rich make
their voices heard, even more so today with their ability to donate unlimited
sums of money to PAC’s through their own wealth or by the company’s profits.
We need to get
the voices of the people heard once again, as it had been when this country
began.
We need to bring
this government back to being of the people, by the people, for the people.
100 Million must
march!
March to the
Polls and demand a Better America!
