Free In Idaho!

Dinesh D’Souza’s article over at Townhall is perfectly timed for the days before the Fourth of july, and the days after the immigration bill defeat.  The article speaks of why people, especially young people, from around the world are so drawn by America and the ideal she represents.  Certainly, they come seeking the promise of wealth

Critics of America, both at home and abroad, have an easy explanation for why the American idea is so captivating and why immigrants want to come here. The reason, they say, is that America represents “the bitch goddess of success.” In this view, immigrants flock to the United States for the sole purpose of getting rich.

But there is something much deeper than sheer materialism that calls to hearts and minds across the globe, and it is the same thing that drew the original settlers of this country.  He boils it down to this

In most of the world, even today, your identity and your fate are largely handed to you. In America, by contrast, you get to write the script of your own life. What to be, where to live, who to love, who to marry, what to believe, what religion to practice—these are all decisions that, in America, we make for ourselves. Here we are the architects of our own fate.

It is those people who hear this call of freedom, who long to be part of it, and who will do whatever they have to in order to grasp it, that we will welcome with open arms.  Do you get leaky eyes watching the occasional tv news story about new citizens taking their oath?  I do.  Do you love the stories of the son or daughter graduating from high school or college, and calling out their parents, who came to this country and worked so very hard in order to make a foundation that the child could use to achieve things beyond their parents’ dreams?  THAT is what America is about, and that is what makes this country the greatest on the planet, and so worth celebrating.

A pox on all who desire to hurt it, and on all of you who would change it from a great free country with nearly limitless opportunity, into a namby-pamby, socialist nanny state.  Take from the producers, the courageous, the brave, the dreamers, the doers, and give it all away to the lazy, the permanent “victims”, the do-nothings,  with their mouths open and their hands out?  If the “script of your own life” looks like a foodstamp and healthcare line, given by a super nanny government that robbed the rest of its citizens, then I don’t think so.  That is not America… Not here, not now, and God help us, not ever.

Some quotes for the eve of the 4th of July

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

“I am sure that never was a people, who had more reason to acknowledge a Divine interposition in their affairs, than those of the United States;  and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our Revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them.”

“We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.”

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.”

John F. Kennedy, George Washington, Robert J. McCracken, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison , John F. Kennedy