America, my home!

Becoming cynical and sarcastic is easy especially when one looks at the sheer magnitude of the incompetence of our politicians. Some of them are good and honest, no doubt, but the overwhelming cowardice of the liberal left in Congress is rather staggering. Yesterday, I had a great opportunity to speak with a next door neighbor. He's a junior in high school, in honors classes, and fed up with the weight of mediocrity in his school. His particular complaint right now is why he has to show up all the time for classes when he gets his straight A report card and he's bored to death. He has a point. He is working as a "sandwich artist" at the local Subway and saving for college. I was sharing my new-found freedom of spirit and he was patiently accepting that even with the decades of chronological age between us, he would show kindness to his "slow-learner", earned Ph.D. neighbor. After all, our family pet is named after him - my young neighbor. We do share the ravages of hurricanes and we do share our neighborhood. He spoke of how he distrusted our government from A to Z and how he loved our nation and our culture. He was also especially contemptuous of our "institutionalized racism" - affirmative action. He wasn't too keen on the illegals flooding the nation either and trashing our lakes, parks, rivers, streams, etc. What was so refreshing was that I did not lead the conversation. I just listened to his perspective. I took heart though that perhaps the attitudes are changing and perhaps our youth are fed up with all this political correctness and "diversity" crap when we are either Americans (citizens of the United States of America), legal residents, or we are illegals sucking off the government breast of milk, victimology mana, and vote-buying. America, the United States of America, is my home! I am not a hyphenated (can't decide on an identity) American. It's always been funny to me when someone says, "I'm an African-American, I'm an Asian-American, I'm a Native American (meaning American Indian); I'm an Irish-American." Duh! Please - that self-idenfication says one of two things: you think other folks are really stupid or you suffer from an identity crisis! The question is: are you an American (citizen of the USA) or are you an African, Asian, Irish man??? Our so-called skin-deep diversity is not what makes us strong. What brings us together as Americans (USA Americans) is what makes us strong - our flag, our national sport - BASEBALL, our motherhood and apple pie, our US Consitution, our equality before the law (well almost unless you are going for "special preferences" like you-know-who - the new victims de jour (all self-created and self-defined victims I might add). What brings us together are the symbols of our nation and her growth - the Liberty Bell, the Mall in DC, the smell and taste of a hot dog with mustard and onions at a ball game. So much more but you get the idea - the purple mountains' majesty, those stars and stripes waving from on high. Yep, I'm proud to be an American and I'm proud of our world colleagues - the Brits, the Aussies, the folks in Europe who are not ashamed of their grand cultures that formed so much of the foundation of ours - the Greeks, the Italians, and the French of the Revolutionary War era. I can be disappointed in any given administration but America's my home. I don't want to see this bastion on a hill destroyed. My young neighbor rather assured me that it would not be and he and his peers intended to make sure it wasn't. So, to maintain the promise of our nation, we must remain ever vigilant, ever free! [Center for Viligant Freedom] God bless America!