America's North Shore Journal

Do I hear music and see flags waving when I think of America? Damn right I do!

America to me is an ideal. “That shining city on a hill” as Reagan the Liberator called it. It is a dream and an aspiration, a hope and a promise.

I hear Kate Smith singing “God Bless America”. I hear tired soldiers from Maine singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at Gettysburg. I hear Lee Greenwood singing “I’m Proud to Be an American”. I hear James Cagney singing “Over There”.

I see the “Don’t Tread on Me!” flag. I see the Stars and Stripes over Fort McHenry. I see the flags over the Alamo. I see the flag being raised at Iwo Jima, and on the tanks entering Paris. I see the flags on the coffins being flown back from Vietnam, and on the coffins being flown back from Somalia. I see people in the Ivory Coast waving the American flag, people in Kosovo, people in Haiti.

I see the American Flag flying proudly on the moon.

America means something. We were the first to declare as a nation that “All men are created equal”. We were the first to put in writing a “Bill of Rights”. Our Statue of Liberty says “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…”

Americans have shed blood all over the world in the last hundred years, usually to set someone else free. Our best have died so that others, unknown, unnamed, unborn, could enjoy the fruits of liberty. We give away that which we shed blood for, because liberty is the most precious gift we have to give.

The past challenges us daily. Can we be as good as they were? My father was part of the greatest generation. Will we, this latest, the heirs to freedom, rise to the moment and be just as great? Are we willing to say to those before us “Your sacrifices were not in vain. We will carry on. America will stay free, and the example to the world of what liberty can accomplish.”