Why I Love America

by Gen LaGreca 

As we celebrate Independence Day, let us remember the many reasons to honor America—and to fear for its future.

I love America for being the place where an upstart group of colonists, imbued with the ideas of liberty, launched an impossible battle against the Goliath British Empire, the most powerful force in the world—and won.

I love America for establishing a revolutionary new country in which a person’s life is his and his alone to live as he chooses and for his own sake, where a person has complete sovereignty over himself and his possessions, and government’s only purpose is to protect that sacred right.

I love America for recognizing that not only is it illegal for a criminal to steal your property, rob you of your liberty, or hijack your life, but the government cannot do these things to you, either. I love America for being the first country in history to establish through its founding charter that government cannot act like a common criminal, but must be accountable to moral law, which means it must respect the rights of the individual.

I love America for igniting a firestorm of liberty that ultimately led to the abolition of slavery, the suffrage of women, and the spread of freedom around the globe.

I love America for unshackling the minds of its people so that they could think, dream, create, and achieve, triggering an explosion of scientific and industrial advancement and a standard of living unmatched—and unimaginable—in history.

I love America for being the place where wealth was created and earned, rather than looted and plundered, a place where it was understood that if persons were to be free, then their economic activities had to be out of the grip of government.

I love America for being the place where it was possible for genius to flourish, where the Henry Fords, the Thomas Edisons, the Wright Brothers, and many other innovators formed ground-breaking new industries that moved mankind forward.

I love America for spawning the American Dream, the worldwide symbol of the boundless opportunity and achievement that results from the freedom to carve one’s own destiny.

I love America for offering freedom and opportunity to so many of our ancestors who arrived as immigrants, who came here to work—not to collect handouts or to terrorize—and who knew that in America nothing was owed to them and everything had to be earned, and who rose to the challenge, creating a spectacularly better life for themselves and for us, their descendants.

I love America for its vision of a truly civilized society, one of independent, resourceful, industrious, wealth-creating, and life-loving people, who live in peace and good will toward their fellow man because no one can stake a claim to anyone else’s life, wealth, or property.

I love America for being the country where people could work hard, rise, and be proud of their success, because production, profit, wealth, and achievement were life-giving values to attain and enjoy, not to envy and loot.

The America I love is fast becoming a distant memory. Every day we wake up to frightening new assaults on our rights—on our industries, our freedom of speech, our freedom to control our own lives, our food, our healthcare, our children’s education, our homes, our businesses. Every aspect of our lives is under assault by an ever-growing, intrusive, liberty-killing government. The root of all of these attacks is the notion that a person no longer owns and controls his own life. It is in the hands of a menacingly growing government to control for its own ends.

No matter how much our country has swayed from its ideals today, I will never forget that I am an American. I will never forget that our ancestors forged a continent not with public aid and bailouts but with the shining vision of a better life and the self-reliance to attain it. Our forebears created wealth, progress, and achievement on an unprecedented scale. No government fed our pioneers, inspected their wagons for safety, certified their chickens, meddled in their businesses, looted their wealth, or subjected their lives to endless controls, permissions, and regulations.

The time has come to reclaim our legacy from the meddlers, moochers, expropriators, and budding tyrants who are hammering away at Lady Liberty, knocking her down bit by bit, and ready to topple her completely.

When we enjoy our barbecues and fireworks on Independence Day, let’s remember the real meaning of this holiday. The day America was born is the day the individual broke free of the shackles of government to forge his own life. The result was unprecedented and spectacular. The cause was liberty; the effect was the flourishing of human life. Today we see everywhere a new force at work: the destruction of liberty. The effect is the destruction of our cities, our industries, our schools, our healthcare, our energy, our wealth, our power.

We the people must pick up the pieces, make our Lady whole again, and return her to her pedestal as the country we love and honor, the country of liberty.

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This essay is excerpted from the author’s e-book, The Pioneer vs. the Welfare State: Essays on Liberty in Peril. Get your FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK on AMAZON KINDLE, now through July 5 amzn.to/1nUT0xh .

Gen LaGreca is also the author of two novels that celebrate individualism and liberty, Noble Vision and A Dream of Daring, available on Amazon.

Copyright© 2014 by Genevieve LaGreca. Permission to reproduce this essay is given with attribution to the author.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson

On April 13th every American should raise a Champagne glass to toast the farmer, architect, scholar, revolutionary, and American president born that spring day in 1743: Thomas Jefferson. One of our greatest Founding Fathers, Jefferson carved much of the government and character of his precious gem, America.

He penned numerous documents extolling the revolutionary ideas of his time, including the stirring words on the parchment that created the new nation of America, “The Declaration of Independence.” Yet how many of our current citizens—and elected officials—truly understand its meaning? This is why it’s necessary to explain its great principles of individual rights and limited government.

The Declaration launched the first country in history based on the principle that every individual possesses certain “unalienable” rights. According to Jefferson's writings, “free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their Chief Magistrate.” No tyrant has the authority to violate the rights of man, nor does any majority in Congress. “...the majority, oppressing an individual,” says Jefferson, “is guilty of a crime . . . and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.”

Our rights belong to us as individuals, with each of us possessing the same rights. There are no “rights” of groups to any special favors or privileges. It is inappropriate, for example, for pizza eaters to lobby Congress for a “right” to a free pizza every Thursday. If Congress grants their wish, out of concern for their nourishment or their votes, it acts outside of its proper function. According to Jefferson, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated [in the Constitution].”

Our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are rights to take action; they are not entitlements to the goods and services of others. Jefferson defined liberty as “unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” This means we may act in our own behalf, for example, to earn money and buy a house, but we may not expect the government to tax others to provide us with a house for free.

Life requires productive work and effort to sustain it, a fact that Jefferson considered to be our glory. When his Monticello farm fell on hard times, he began producing nails, and did so proudly because “every honest employment is deemed honorable [in America]. . . . My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility . . . [is] in Europe.” He scorned the “idleness” of the European aristocracy, calling their courts “the weakest and worst part of mankind.” What would he think of our current government's grants and handouts to countless special-interest groups, a practice that rewards people for non-effort?

Our right to property means we have the right to keep the things we acquire. Does a rich person have less of a right to property than a poor person? According to Jefferson: “To take from one because it is thought his own industry . . . has acquired too much, in order to spare others who . . . have not exercised equal industry and skill is to violate the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” What would he think of the persistent cries of today's politicians to “tax the rich,” thereby depriving them of their property and the pursuit of their happiness?

Jefferson ardently championed the spiritual and intellectual independence of the individual. He was so proud of authoring the “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom” in Virginia that he had this fact etched on his tombstone. The bill ended the practice of paying the clergy with public funds because “to compel a man to furnish . . . money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.” Jefferson believed that religion was a completely private matter and fought for a “wall of separation between church and state.” He was “against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another”; and he swore “eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” What would he think of special interests and politicians of both parties, past and present—from advocates of Prohibition to faith-based initiatives—who try to dictate public policy and spend taxpayer money to promote religious objectives? And what would he think of the current administration's unprecedented power over religious organizations that provide health insurance, forcing them to offer benefits that violate their conscience?

Because we possess rights, governments are instituted. Wise government, explains Jefferson, “shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Government acts only to protect us from acts of force or fraud, apprehending perpetrators who pick our pockets or break our legs; otherwise, it does not regulate or control our lives in any way. Jefferson was “for a government rigorously frugal and simple . . . and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans . . . ” What would he think of the swarms of agencies, bureaus, commissions, and departments that today swallow more than 40-percent of our national income?

Jefferson believed citizens to be capable of self-sufficiency because they possess reason. “Fix reason firmly to her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.” He expected people to use their minds to overcome obstacles and control their own lives. He gently chastised his 15 year-old daughter when she had difficulty reading an ancient text on Roman history without the aid of her teacher. “If you always lean on your master, you will never be able to proceed without him. It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate—to surmount every difficulty . . . ” Americans, he continued, “are obliged to invent and to execute; to find the means within ourselves, and not to lean on others.” To do otherwise, his daughter would be “thought a very helpless animal, and less esteemed.” What would he think of today's entitlement programs, which destroy a person's capacity to think and act for himself, and transform him into a helpless dependent?

Within a mere page in the calendar of history, the powerful doctrine of individual rights led to the abolition of slavery, the suffrage of women, and the spread of freedom to many countries around the globe. It all began with the founding of America.

Jefferson fought for a country in which the government had no power to encroach on the mind, the life, the liberty, and the property of the individual. He fought for a country in which the individual was unshackled for the first time in history and could live for the pursuit of his own happiness, instead of being a pawn in the hands of the state. The way to pay tribute to Jefferson—and to ourselves—is to protest the hammering of our rights by officials who can't tell a diamond from a rhinestone, to hold dear the jewel that is America, and to polish the ideals for which Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

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This essay is excerpted from the author’s e-book, The Pioneer vs. the Welfare State: Essays on Liberty in Peril, available on Amazon Kindle. Gen LaGreca is also the author of two novels that celebrate individualism and liberty, Noble Vision and A Dream of Daring, available on Amazon.

 

Copyright © 2014 by Genevieve LaGreca. Permission to reproduce is given with proper attribution to the author.