I am #AmericaProud. Are you?

While a small minority of us celebrated a certain type of “pride” last month, I think we all can agree that we are Americans and should be proud of that fact. (If you’re not, I’m sort of surprised you’re reading here.)

Yet while our President lit the White House in various colors up in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges, he didn’t extend that privilege to the nation he leads by keeping the red and blue lamps around to give it a festive feel on Saturday night. Nor will you get the media to say much of anything good about American exceptionalism, and according to my friend Rick Manning at NetRightDaily that’s a shame:

Many of the same people who defended the right of miscreants to burn the American flag, now argue that the American flag should be torn from the flag pole as it offends some who come from other cultures. They argue that the government should act to stop the free exercise of religion by virtue of declaring contrary points of view to be “hate speech.”  They argue for the government to impose a personal freedom from being exposed to ideas that they disagree with, so they can maintain a safe zone bubble.

Rather than the free exchanges of ideas that have helped America grow strong, they want a government imposed monopoly of ideas that coincides with their limited understanding of the world.

This is the battle that America has just begun to wake up to.  A national discussion that goes to the root of who we will be in the future, and those whose base argument is that government determines what rights individuals have naturally are trying to silence those who believe that individual freedoms are protected from the government rather than defined by it.

The idea of America is freedom to do, speak and take action without the shackles of a federal government overlord is at risk.  The underlying, guiding assumption of our nation’s history that the government did not bestow rights, so the government cannot take them away is being challenged.

This very revolutionary concept that has brought our nation to being the greatest the world has ever known is in imminent danger.  Should we, as a people, accede to those who wish to rule us by agreeing with their premise that rights are fungible and the government is the grantor of whatever freedom it chooses to allow, America will no longer be exceptional or unique.  Our nation will slip back into the norm of history, being ruled without rights with the people taking whatever crumbs that fall out of our master’s hands rather than striving for their own dreams.

This is why I have joined with others in celebrating July as America Proud month.  A month dedicated to educating and discussing those God-given freedoms that make our nation unique, and American Exceptionalism real.

Honestly I think it should be a twelve-month operation, but what do I know? I’m just a dumb hick ‘murican.

And it’s truly not a partisan issue. In the old days you may have had differences on the extent of government, but politics stopped at the water’s edge and when the chips were down we were all proud to be American regardless of whether we were rich or poor, immigrant or native, or whatever nationality they shared. We had that for about a week after 9/11 but once the remains were extracted and the mourning complete we went right back to some blaming America first.

You won’t see the media pushing this sort of pride, though. America Proud is a low-budget operation that’s basically a Facebook page and a hashtag, with the real chance all will be forgotten once August rolls around and the patriotic fervor surrounding July 4th dies away. Next week we will start to be inundated with back-to-school marketing, and that’s the mindset people will quickly fall into despite the fact school is still 4 to 6 weeks away for most kids.

So be #AmericaProud this month, but don’t forget the other eleven months of the year either.

Author: Michael

When I'm away, I can run the site from my cel.