Why I Love America

By Gen LaGreca

I love America for being the place where an upstart group of colonists, against all odds, battled the most powerful empire in the world---and won---all in the cause of liberty.

I love America for establishing a revolutionary new country in which a person’s life is his and his alone to live for his own sake, and government’s sole purpose is to protect that sacred right.

I love America for recognizing that not only is it illegal for a criminal to steal your property, force you to do things against your will, or hijack your life, but the government cannot do these things, either. I love America for declaring for the first time in history that government cannot act like a common criminal but must be accountable to moral law.

I love America for igniting a firestorm of liberty that in a brief page on the calendar of history led to the abolition of slavery, the suffrage of women, and the spread of freedom around the globe.

I love America for triggering an explosion of scientific and industrial advancement and a standard of living unmatched---and unimaginable---in history.

I love America for fostering the climate of freedom in which genius can flourish, making possible the Henry Fords, the Thomas Edisons, the Wright Brothers, and the many other innovators who formed entire new industries that moved mankind forward.

I love America for being the place where wealth was created and earned, rather than looted and plundered.

I love America for spawning the American Dream, the worldwide symbol of the boundless opportunity and achievement that freedom brings.

I love America for making possible a truly civilized society, one of self-sufficient, resourceful, confident, hard-working, wealth-creating, and life-loving people, who lived in a spirit of peace and good will toward their fellow man because no one staked a claim to anyone else’s wallet.

I love America for offering freedom and opportunity to so many of our ancestors who arrived as immigrants, who knew that in America nothing was owed to them and everything had to be earned, and who rose to the challenge, creating a spectacular new life for themselves and for us, their descendants.

I love America for being the country where people could work hard, rise, and be proud of their success, because production, profit, wealth, and achievement were the stuff that American heroes were made of.

No matter how much our country has swayed from its ideals today, I will never forget that I am an American. I will never forget that our ancestors forged a continent not with public aid and bailouts but with the shining vision of a better life and the self-reliance to attain it. Our forebears created wealth, progress, and achievement on an unprecedented scale. No government fed our pioneers, inspected their wagons for safety, certified their chickens, meddled in their businesses, looted their wealth, or subjected their lives to endless controls, permissions, and regulations. No government built the breathtaking skylines of our majestic cities, the proud monuments to free minds and free commerce. The government’s fingerprints can be found only on the shattered shells of public housing that wound our cities, a grim reminder of the failed welfare state.

The time has come to reclaim our legacy from the meddlers, moochers, expropriators, and budding tyrants who are hammering away at Lady Liberty, knocking her down bit by bit, and ready to topple her completely.

We the people must pick up the pieces, make our Lady whole again, and return her to her golden pedestal as the country we love and honor, the country of liberty.

Let us ponder these thoughts on Independence Day.

Gen LaGreca is the author of Noble Vision, a ForeWord Magazine Book-of-the-Year award-winning novel about liberty. © 2009 by Genevieve LaGreca. Author gives permission to post, publish, or pass on, with the above attribution.