We Owe Them More Than What We Have Given

When I think about the birth of our nation, and the men who sacrificed so much to see it born, I feel sick to my stomach. Not because of anything they did…our forefathers gave more than we could ask for, setting a foundation for a nation like the world had never seen. No, I feel sick because of what came after, because of how this current brand of Americans has let them down in every way. Each generation that followed the creation of America in 1776 had a simple responsibility- to protect and defend our rights as citizens, and to better our nation for the men and women that follow. Sometime during the past few decades, we have failed our mission completely.

The American citizen is not supposed to be a delightful pawn of the government. We were not destined to sit in silence with our hands held meekly out, waiting for those in government to provide us with basic essentials. We were not meant to never question but blindly obey; we were not meant to care more about feelings than about what is right and decent; we were not meant to accept and even protect the guilty while ignoring the cries of the innocent.

The American citizen was born as a pain in the ass to its government. We are supposed to question every decision; we are supposed to demand honest answers even if the answer is ‘hell if I know’; we were meant to sit in the yard with a loaded shotgun, daring our government to screw us over. American citizens are supposed to be full of piss and vinegar, supposed to be hellraisers who refuse to simply settle. We are supposed to expect and demand the very best of our nation’s leaders, and even more so every person who resides in our great land. Where is our frontier spirit when we need it the most?

Instead thousands of us sit on welfare, bitching about how we can’t get a job. We sit there and turn the other way when we watch the common man get trampled into the ground again and again. Organizations abound to ‘protect’ the rights of any and every group of people imaginable, but when I say protect the rights I really mean watch out for the feelings. Lord forbid we offend a pedophile, a rapist, or an illegal immigrant. Hell, we're even afraid to offend terrorists for crying out loud. We have become so damn politically correct that we have lost our identity, our moral compass, and essentially everything that made Americans great.

Our politicans do whatever they want with little regard to what is best for the country. The current Congress has done absolutely nothing, fullfilled none of their promises, but they aren’t dragged out of the hall and horsewhipped. No, we sit in silence as our economy fails, as our people struggle to make ends meet, and Congress bumps up its salary just a tad bit more. We have paperwork circulating declaring any defender of the Constitution (that document that was the birth of our nation) to be a domestic terrorist, and still we say nothing.

America has been falling for a long time, longer than eight damn years, and I don’t know if we can ever get her back. We have become fat and lazy, and we lack the initiative, heart, and kiss my ass attitude that made our country stand tall when others faltered. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that America can shake off this pathetic apathy we have, and reclaim our right. We owe our forefathers that. We’re supposed to have the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness but nobody gives a damn about anything but happiness. Liberty is gone. Freedom is gone. The American spirit has withered away, but the fault is not that of our government.

The fault belongs to each and every one of us. We did it to ourselves every time we settled, every time we shut up, every time we looked the other way instead of pulling up our bootstraps and kicking the damn door open. We have lost everything that our forefathers gave us, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

If we never regain our destiny it is no more than we deserve. Because the government has not failed us. We have failed us.