This week is very special to me. This week we celebrate our veterans. It is an honor to be able to celebrate the freedoms for which they fight and it is, especially, an honor to salute them.
My family is filled with veterans, beginning with my grandfathers and my great uncles and now with my own brother, Chris. I have been given the honor of singing every year on Memorial Day for the Overton County Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion since 2002. My heart is with the veterans.
It makes me sad, however, to see the government take away the freedoms for which these men and women fought. They fought for freedom from oppression, freedom to speak freely, and, most of all, for the freedom of religion. I hate seeing what our leaders in this country are doing to the freedoms the pilgrims came to America to have.
These freedoms have been fought for since the day America became a British colony. Our founding fathers wrote a constitution, a bill of rights, and a declaration, declaring us free from tyranny, taxation without representation, and one nation under God.
From the American Revolution to the Civil War, freedom was fought for and won at a costly price. Men died for the right to be free. World War I was fought to free countries being overrun by other countries greedy for wealth and power. The U.S. entered World War II to give the Japanese a “what for” for killing innocent soldiers on our home turf, Hawaii.
Multiple wars and rumors of wars were fought in the last 50 to 60 years because of freedom. In the last 10 to 12 years alone, one war, the war on Terrorism, has been fought and many have died, including a distant family member. Our men and women fight for freedom still today.
But what are we doing to preserve these freedoms they die for? Nothing.
We are asleep as a nation and our government is taking our freedoms away one at a time. I am not playing the blame game between the political parties here; I am blaming all of us.
We were and still are a nation framed on the basis of Christianity and now we are throwing away the very thing that started this nation, freedom of religion, freedom to worship God how they saw fit. We took prayer out of schools because of one complaining Jezebel and now we are taking God out of this country.
WAKE UP, America! We are losing ourselves in this “let’s make people feel good” stupidity and we aren’t taking up our flag of freedom. We are tossing aside the very rights so many people died for and are still dying for today.
This is a call to arms, wake up and look at the reality of what our nation is going through. This is our sign to get up and do something. We need to stand up and fight. Fight with prayer, fight with your votes, fight and don’t give up.
If we sit and do nothing, we void the sacrifice these men and women made. We sell ourselves short and, in the end, we will be no better than communist East Germany before the wall came down. We will be no better than communist China.
Honor the men and women who have died in the 200 plus years we have been a nation by not giving up. Don’t take a back seat and rest on your laurels. It is time to do as Lee Greenwood once sang, “I am proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men who died and gave that right to me. And I proudly STAND UP next to you and defend her still today, cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land, God bless the U.S.A.”
Stand up and don’t quit standing.
