Freedom...

As a nation, we recently celebrated our birthday, Independence Day. The day when we stood up, declared our self a sovereign nation, and swore to free ourselves from the rule and tyranny we had labored under. We decided that we were worthy of self-government, and that we were willing to shoulder the responsibility associated with our own choices. God was on our side, and we won against our mother country. The United States of America was born.

Two Hundred and Thirty-Four years later, we stand in the middle of another battleground. All around us, are people that seek to slough off the responsibilities that are theirs. People willing to violate the natural laws of actions and consequence. People looking to governments to somehow solve their problems for them. In short, people do not want to think. They do not want to work. And they do not want to be held accountable for their actions.

Even worse, are the leaders that are not held accountable before the people. Government's seek for a stronger hand, and politicians scheme the ways that they may crush out the individual in trade for a collective mass. Control is in their design. Freedom? Responsibility? Accountability? Where are these things?

No!

The American people must not stand by and watch as though it was some movie in which they take only a marginal interest, or a game to be forgotten tomorrow. We did not become a great, free nation through the mediocrity of human spirit. We were not favored by God because we stood and begged someone to save us from our actions.

We became a great nation because men and women were willing to act according to what was right. They were willing to recognize that every individual has a responsibility for their own soul, their own life, their own actions.

We can not undertake to remove responsibility from people. As a nation, we must shoulder up, and act as though God himself intended for us to act, with courage, dignity, honesty, and purpose.

Freedom will not last without our effort. It will become the stuff of a distant dream, lost in the legends of great men and women.