Jefferson Review

"Your Liberty is Our Interest"

Home /  Archives / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

What it Means to Be an American

By Gordon Francis Corbett

I am proud to be an American.

Being an American does not mean living in a geographical area called the United States.  It means living heedless of the rich and fearless of the powerful.  It means living confident of being free to attain one's goals;  to keep one's earnings;  and to speak one's mind, all without violating the rights of others.  It means living with one's rights secure, protected by paid public guardians Constitutionally limited to that task alone.

Such is not the case in other countries.  That fact explains why so many people come here.  While they can earn more money here than they can back home, it is the sweet smell of freedom that exerts the strongest pull.

Our country has never been perfect.  Some Americans owned black slaves.  Others murdered Indians.  Some Americans hate others merely because their religions are different.  Some just flat cheat other Americans, and one debt in particular has a long history.  "Wikipedia" reports that Haym Solomon, a Jew who lent our Continental Congress at least six hundred thousand dollars to finance our War of Independence, had been repaid only about one-third that amount when he died.

Regardless, a glance at our Bill of Rights helps to explain our country's attraction.  Freedom of religion, assembly, and speech;  freedom to keep and bear arms;  freedom from having to quarter soldiers in our homes, except in time of war;  freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures;  freedom from being forced to testify against oneself, or from having one's property taken without just compensation;  freedom to have a speedy trial by jury;  freedom to have an attorney's help when accused of a criminal or civil offense;  freedom from having a right's omission from the Constitution used to justify its infringement;  and, finally, a guarantee against having the States' rights usurped by the Federal Government.

Other countries have enjoyed some of these protections, but none has had all of them.  These Constitutional phrases are more than pretty words fancily written on ancient parchment.  They are a hammer that lets us smash any attempt to take away our freedom.  But, there is a catch.

To determine whether we need to use our "hammer," we have to know what our public guardians are doing.  President Bush has told his departments that if they resist demands for information under the Freedom of Information Act, they will have his support.  For that reason, I urge you all to urge Congress to restore the Freedom of Information Act.  We need, and we deserve to know, what our public servants are doing on our nickel.

You and I are heirs to the finest system of freedom ever built on this planet.  The principles that it guaranteed made Europe's peoples envious and their leaders nervous.  The prosperity it facilitated put fire in Liberty's Torch.  

Today, clouds of regulations issued by hordes of bureaucrats have shrunk our freedom.  We can fix that.  Henry David Thoreau once said, "Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but with the alacrity with which it got out of its way."  Our predecessors once made government stay out of the way.  You and I can make them do it again.  On how soon we make them depends the freedom of generations yet unborn.

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest /  White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN