Can America Be Saved?

In high school, I took a trip to Washington DC with a few of my classmates. It was a school sponsored trip to learn about our country in real time by visiting our nation's capital. It was a memorable trip. I came face to face with the Charters of Freedom located at the National Archives in D.C. Specifically, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

And these very antiquated, but real documents written on paper and ink, that established a basis of freedom for the people of this country, sat right before me in real time. I imagine the amount of hope that must have run through the very souls of the early founders of this country having just won the Revolutionary War and arrived at this moment of signing these freedom bearing papers. A stroke of triumph. Surely, these rebels were brimming with joy and thinking this time, things could be radically different. No more king. No more tyranny. No more taxation without representation. Just words stating we are free and have certain God-given, inalienable rights.

And suddenly you had God-given rights packaged into a state-sponsored declaration. You had the basic human right to form beliefs and practice them peaceably. For example, the Establishment Clause prevented federal governments from creating a national church or endorsing religion in general. The Free Exercise Clause protected citizens' right to practice any religion, or no religion at all, without government interference. You had freedom of speech to protect you against the idea that the king would shut you up with the cruelest of tactics. This was not a small thing. It was essentially unprecedented. Even if it had been conceived of before, it had not been given such an opportunity to actually succeed. These rights were legally established and now it was up to the people to maintain them.

The National Archives where the Charters of Freedom, the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence are displayed in Washing D.C.

But one thing is clear. The creators and early political figures of these charters of freedom never viewed them as a permanent guarantee. They themselves battled for them, and some died for these words. More than Americans today, they knew freedom needed to be secured and could not be taken for granted. A nation, self-governed and free was more of a social experiment than a promise.

For example, George Washington described America as an "experiment of quite as much delicacy as magnitude." Alexander Hamilton noted that Americans were tasked with deciding whether societies can establish good government through choice, rather than force. Benjamin Franklin said, "it's a republic... if we can keep it." Later, Abraham Lincoln, as he watched the ravages of war, stated "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal....Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." Lincoln concluded by urging those listening that America needed a "new birth of freedom" to the end that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

You get the idea. This form of government is supposed to be by us, and for us. And in my youth, as a young high school student this was all very poetic and inspiring. I was a bit of a dreamer. Now as a grown man, I am a realist. I question whether we ever truly had a government that was for us. But if we did, I firmly suggest that the government we have today in this country, is no longer for us and does not fit the original vision promised. We serve it, instead of it serving us. The rulers of today are our overlords and not our representatives.

There are so many troubling developments in this country, they are almost too numerous to name. The breakdown of civil political discourse, debate and free elections. An insanely complex, oppressive tax code consisting of 20,000+ pages and over 10 million words, all to ensure that every penny earned by the American people gets taxed so that it can be frivolously and corruptly wasted by the government on items that we the people do not approve. How ironic that the early revolutionaries died to escape, in part, tyrannical taxation. Boy, have we come full circle. And I haven't even mentioned mass surveillance of law-abiding peaceable citizens in the false disguise of "peace and safety." No one in this country voted for the level of taxation and spending that we have in this country today. We didn't vote for a $40 trillion national debt that goes up exponentially with each tick of the clock.

The idea of the American dream never had anything to do with which politician had the biggest personality. It didn't even have to do strictly with money and creation of wealth. It was all about freedom. These principles of freedom may be boring to some. It's not flashy. It may be antiquated and written on a paper in real ink, hundreds of years old while the world has moved on to smartphones and flying cars. But it's freedom that I care about. It's about the correct ideas to truly make us thrive, plain and simple. Not false promises building false hope.

But above all else, I don't blame government for our problems. It's not the politicians fault. After all, this is our government. We the people are tasked with making the decisions. If we lose the American dream, it's because we took the freedoms we had for granted and refused to stand up for what is right. We stayed silent when we should have spoken. We tolerated when we should have held accountable tyranny.

I used to have the feeling that it meant something to be American. It meant fireworks and freedom and the Fourth of July, and baseball and hotdogs and things like this. We had a constitution that protected our rights. This experiment of America always meant, could we keep our freedoms or would they be eroded from without or within? Unless we get back to the first principles very quickly, we will have our answer soon enough.

What can be done to make this country America again? Just ordinary people, doing ordinary things. Writing blogs, not staying silent. Taking part in our society. And it would help if a truly great leader emerged.