Today we mourn the passing of the United States of America, born July 4th, 1776 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, died midnight, November 6, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois.
She was murdered by her own citizens.
It all happened in broad daylight with witnesses watching.
America’s downfall began with some dogmatic doggerel encouraging her to listen to a gospel of political correctness that confused right from left. She was then purposely distracted with the diversion of diversity directing her down one-way streets into one terminal cul-de-sac after another. Lost, she tried to hide God behind a brightly-colored canvas of clown faces, trying to drown out prayer with a laugh track of mockery. She never really succeeded, pretend to the contrary though she might try.
The polluting propaganda had its effect. She soon bought into the arrogant expectation that she was due something for nothing. She welcomed participation in cavalier competitions where no scoring was allowed. This required the dismissal of accountability so she no longer had to take responsible for her own actions. She followed this by firing self-reliance, only to be replaced with dependency. Soon she was she strung-out on government benefits.
When she became sufficiently vulnerable America was poisoned with liberal lies coated with sweet icings of half-truths. When that did not kill her she was suffocated with pillows stuffed with the stiff straw of concocted equality depriving her of the oxygen of excellence; then stabbed in the heart with plunging daggers of doubt in her own exceptionalism; hung from gallows on the twisted twines of holier-than-thou compassion. When these efforts proved insufficient she was enticed into a game of Russian roulette by conniving crackajacks pretending no harm. Blindsided she shot herself through the brain with a bullet provided by universities of institutionalized ignorance from a gun she had been led to believe was loaded with blanks.
Still they could not kill her.
So they drowned her in debt.
She will be missed by those who fought to protect her but were forced away by ignorant know-it-alls eager to disguise her demise as the unavoidable natural cause of historical tides; the same citizenry that soils itself with greedy impatience racing towards pinwheels and cotton candy.
O America! O beautiful America’s spacious skies, her amber waves of grain, her purple mountains majesties above a fruited plain. America, America, God shed his Grace on thee.
Her accomplishments overflowed her brief life.
She started out as a kid sister of royalty but quickly grew tired of being taxed with troubles from abroad. It wasn’t long before she became a full-skirted revolutionary - but no ordinary revolutionary. She founded principles of freedom which she avowed in a Declaration of Independence that has become a paradigm for human yearnings. She then codified those principles into law in her Constitution.
America held certain truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, brought forth on this continent by a government of the people, by the people, for the people, that shall not perish from the earth.
But yes, now and again she did fail.
She tasted the bitter swill of slavery and segregation but recognizing her failures she corrected them. It may have taken longer than many wished but she issued an Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves and a civil rights bill that ended the policy of separate but equal. She ratified an amendment to her Constitution that gave the right to vote to women.
She even tried her hand at temperance which did not work out as well as expected so she repealed her mistake and now we can all drink to that. Hear! Hear!
Her ideal was freedom, freedom of opportunity that reached the ears of huddled masses everywhere yearning to breathe free, drawing the wretched refuse to shores teeming with immigrants, summoned by the imprisoned lightning of her golden lamp.
Opportunities that allowed invention; first in flight, first to light, trains that crossed a continent, the Spirit of St. Louis whose transatlantic flight showcased America’s youthful exuberance. She gave us space shuttles, sky labs and orbiting telescopes that would make Galileo wildly jealous. America even put a man on the man in the moon!
And just for fun she threw in Jazz and Rock and Roll, Hollywood and Disneyworlds.
When and where she could she threw wide her arms so she could expanded her reach from Louisiana to Oregon, from sea to shining sea. She even provided a summer place in Alaska and a winter retreat in Hawaii.
With a soul of generosity and no eye for colonialism she built the Panama Canal and then gave it away. After defeating her enemies in wars not of her choosing she provided loans to rebuild their destroyed cities and then forgave the debt. In the Peace Corps she sent her children to help and to heal those less fortunate in far corners of a dangerous world.
And much more, so much more. To record each achievement would require more leaves than a mariposa grove of giant sequoias could provide. I gasp for breath in the telling.
Never in history has one nation given so much, unasked and asked for so little in return.
Yet she was pilloried for these acts of charity and while being attacked, spit on and mocked she stood straight and tall, the archetype of what a free people can achieve when allowed to be free.
America will be greatly missed and never again equaled.
Ordinarily eulogies call for comforting words in the place of tears so let us shed no tears for America but rejoice in her life…
But no! We must cry, for today, truly, is a sad day.
Something very special has been lost and we need to cry lest we forget what was once America. We must weep till our children look up at us, tug at our sleeves and ask us why. Why are you crying?
We are not crying. We are weeping. Weeping, for once there was a place where rugged individualism was not a pejorative…a place to dream possible dreams…to right rightable wrongs…to reach reachable stars. And why not? America had already reached for the moon and touched it.
May God bless America and rest her troubled soul!
Would you like to comment on this article? Leave a note and let’s have a dialogue. You can also just click on the “Subscribe” button above and receive e-mails alerts when new articles are published. And do not forget that if you have ideas you think might interest other readers please contact me at mcganntom@gmail.com.
Comments