Looking at my family’s ancestrial tree, one sees a lot of hard working, poor people over the past 300 years but few politicians, military officers, attorneys and such. Simply stated, whenever peaceful options digressed to shooting in this country, someone kin to me usually landed in the first wall of defense between our American Flag and a bullet. The following story, told from our perspective, has been passed down from parent to child through all those generations, a perfect paradigm justifying why our family chooses to pay in blood to defend our country and the freedoms we cherish…
In 1776, the unlikliest group of allies in the history of man…rich people, poor people, land owners, small farmers, generals, foot soldiers, hunters, scouts, Christians, Catholics, Puritans, Diests and more…had an epiphany and penned the Constitution of the United States of America accompanied by our Bill of Rights.
These documents were miracles in an age of differences. Thirteen diverse and self-governing colonies, suffocating under the ‘by your leave’ Coercive Acts of King George III of England, put aside their biases and created a new government. “We the people of the United States…” and “…in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers” echoed hope to all the world that people with different creeds and cultural heritages could live together freely and peacefully under one government.
A couple of hundred years before this milestone in history, settlers had flocked to the ‘New World’ despite all the hardships inheritant in crossing a vast expanse of water in tiny wooden ships. They must have cringed thinking about the adversities facing them in an unsettled wilderness...no crops, no housing, no one to defend them from unimagineable perils. Yet, they chose to come, with all the inherent dangers, to live a dream where no government dictated their lives, to be able to speak freely without recourse, to worship beyond the reach of inquisitors, and to call themselves landowners. They came by the hundreds, each with their own agenda, dug in with blood and sweat, built their homes, raised their crops and taught their children and their children’s children the value of being liberated and beholding to no one.
After overthrowing England’s totalitarian rule in 1783, representatives from the 13 colonies, by compromise and selflessness, invented a government to maintain strength in unity while guaranteeing individuality to its states. They segmented its design into three separate and powerful branches, each balanced by its ability to control the others. Most importantly, those freedoms ingrained by their ancestors were guaranteed to everyone by this new and unique democracy. It was genius. Lessons passed from father to son and mother to daughter through generations of struggle paid off. The Consitution had been forged by 1787 and the United States of America was born. The first Congress, as promised by the authors of this great document, amended it to include, in writing, the freedoms we enjoy today. These changes are referred to as The Bill of Rights…
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