Tuesday, July 1, 2014

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.