Rule # 51: Somethings are worth dying for..
You have a legacy in our extended family where one great grandfather was a machine gunner in the the world war II and another great grandfather a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippians, and a survivor of the Bataan death march. A legacy of men you sacrificed the full measure of their youth and risked everything for the freedoms we have as a country.
Their principals mattered, they cared about the liberties and values of this country and were willing to die to protect them. We owe them for everything we have today.
Because of them I never had to take up arms to to defend our country. Because of them I have lived my entire life without fearing the loss of my life or freedom because I believed something different than someone thought I should. My freedoms came cheaply to me because my parents and grand parents paid so dearly.
There are millions of men and women who risks their lives today to preserve this freedom and most of their actions go unnoticed to us because they do it so well. The sacrifices don’t connect emotionally to us because we have just come to expect that we are free.
This week without a shot being fired we gave up so much that have fought for us to keep. With barely a whimper of resistance we just handed over our freedoms.
The movie ” The Interview” was pulled from our theaters because a foreign government said it offend them and they would blow up our theaters if we showed it. So, we gave up and stopped it. No fighting for our rights, no outrage- we just handed over what Bobbi’s Grandfather spent four years in a prison camp to save without even a word. The fear of being threatened by another country was too great to risk, we hid under our beds and prayed they would go away.
Two days later our President traded spies from Cuba for a prisoner. Our President told us that keeping Cuba isolated, was a failed policy and the brutal dictatorship that kills thousands and suppressed virtually every human right was not going to change and we would just have to accept them as they are..evil, but with really good cigars and beautiful beaches. He gave up the fight because it was too hard, and the cigars too good.
I’m worried that you are hearing the message that freedoms and values don’t matter. When we have to sacrifice to keep these freedoms either too much or too long, its better to just give up those freedoms. Because our safety matters more than anything else…who cares if we don’t see a movie or smoke a cigar that pays to keep an innocent in prison.
Kids it does matter. Somethings as your grandfathers and great-grand fathers have taught us things matter. Sometimes protecting our freedoms are worth the cost, no matter how great and painful.
I worry about your future because we have leaders who seem to think everything is negotiable including our basic freedoms. The message you are hearing is wrong, and you have obligations to your family’s legacy of sacrifice to not let this go by without speaking up.
Honestly I don’t think this is a President Obama problem, because he is just of creature of our desires and fears. He is doing what he thinks you want…giving up when the fight gets too hard. He’s not a bad president, he is just responding to a society that has no fight left in it. He couldn’t do these things unless we allowed him to, this isn’t his problem, this is all of our problem.
But there is a “rule” that has become clear in all of this which is an important one. Somethings are worth dying for, and you need to really think about what those things are and be prepared to defend them.
Sometimes it does matter.