Promise of America: Glorious Opportunity, Not Equal Outcomes
The promise of America guarantees every individual an equal opportunity to succeed and this nation delivers on that promise daily. What America doesn’t promise you is an equal outcome.
The results are solely up to you.
Many of our citizens are doing quite well financially, but their prosperity has nothing to do with Washington. Those individuals have succeeded despite the best efforts of their elected representatives.
Armed with nothing but their faith in God, those Americans—of all colors and national origins—have achieved their dreams on the strength of their own hard work and initiative.
America certainly set the table for them, but they had to bring home the bacon.
Where many saw only despair, they saw hope. Where others saw only poverty, they saw prosperity. Where some saw obstacles, they saw opportunities.
Our nation’s history is replete with examples of racism, slavery, and other forms of gross injustice. But despite these things, there is no reason for the United States to apologize for the sins of our nation’s past.
There is no logical reason for normal, everyday citizens to burden themselves with needless guilt. The blood of 625,000 Americans—one-quarter of the male population under the age of twenty-five—which stained our country’s soil during the Civil War has more than repaid any outstanding debt for the issue of slavery.
Our Founding Fathers, a number of whom were slaveholders, wisely incorporated a provision in the Constitution which allowed the 13th Amendment to be ratified into that very same document: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States.”
With those words, Americans need not fear the shackles that are forged of iron. They need not fear “involuntary servitude.” Our greatest fear should always remain the threat of voluntary servitude, shackles that are forged by our own hands.
Throughout our nation’s history, more people have been enslaved by welfare payments than plantation shackles.
Increasing dependence on government to provide our daily bread has placed us all under the threat of bondage. Too many Americans willingly surrendered their freedoms for the sake of another government program or the empty promises of cradle-to-the-grave security.
Even those citizens who have never taken a dime of welfare money can be infected with a “welfare mentality.” This mindset can often permeate their lives, transforming once-thoughtful Americans into mindless boobs, unable to distinguish between hope and hokum.
Welfare thinking causes everyday Americans to applaud a president for suggesting that health-care, child-care, and poodle-care are the fundamental rights of every citizen.
Yet these same Americans often fail to look beyond the emotional appeal. They never ask themselves how all these wonderful ideas will be financed. They never consider that the nickel’s worth of services they are now getting isn’t worth the dollar’s worth of income that was stolen from them.
Others are willing to surrender the freedom of their fellow Americans simply because the government isn’t threatening the individual liberties which they currently enjoy. They cannot find the greatness in themselves to defend another person’s right to engage in those legal and moral activities which they do not choose to practice.
Freedom is seldom snatched away from a people all at one time.
Obama inherently understands this; he counts on it.
Loss of freedom happens slowly, almost imperceptibly. And before too long, all we treasure is soon managed by another.
We all recognize slavery when people are forcibly taken from their land, but we turn a blind eye when the land is forcibly taken from the people.
The hands that reach out for bread are too easily handcuffed. Yet the opportunities for achievement are boundless when Americans cast off the shackles of government.
President Obama and the phony geniuses in Washington cannot determine success anymore than they can prevent failure.
The bounty of America has given each one of us an equal opportunity to pursue our dreams. If we are willing to roll up our sleeves and work hard to achieve them, then there’s no reason to think that all Americans cannot see their dreams become a reality.
But those dreams can only be realized if Obama’s insane desire to remake America doesn’t permanently destroy what’s best about us.
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/columodwyer/5132721363/