What America Stands For

This is a speech I would like to hear someone in power give.  Anyone would do, as long as they're heard, but I wrote it really just because I'm beginning to get extremely frustrated with the political process in this country.  From the President to the media to the voters, the whole thing is frustrating me, and I'm trying to get over it.  Consider this my ranting space.

"What does America stand for?  Everyone has an opinion on this one.   Our founding fathers certainly had some very noble ideas for the nation they were creating.  Ideas like freedom, justice, and equality.  It took the Revolutionary War, Civil War, women's suffrage, and the Civil Rights movement to realize these ideals and it took brave men and women to insist upon them.  We look to these people as heroes of the past, but where are our heroes of the here and now?

We are once again at a crossroads, a point where Americans must stand up for what America stands for, a point where we are, as Abraham Lincoln once put it, "testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."  Will we rise to the challenges that we are faced with?  Will we put aside partisanship?  Will we be able to pull America back from the brink of recession, the brink of war, the brink of ignorance and back into the light of reason?

I think we can, but only if we do more than simply idolize the amazing people that America has produced.  We must emulate them; climb up onto their pedastals and stand beside them to be counted as heroes.  I believe that there is no shortage of bravery, intelligence, or passion in this country.

It's hard to see it, though, when so many voices seem to get lost along the way.  The American people clamor for affordable healthcare and are denied.  Poor families want their children educated so they can achieve the American Dream and nothing is done.  Soldiers, the very defenders of our freedom and all we hold dear, ask for asrmor, for a chance to go home when their tours are over, and are ignored.  Where is the representation in a representative democracy when politicians seem so out of touch with the desires of anyone who doesn't make a seven-digit salary?

Where is the representation, too, when outright lies are parroted by the media?  What good is the free press system when they're more concerned with celebrity babies than honest, open communication about what's going on in our government? 

These things frustrate me, but what truly saddens me is the fact that there's so little vocal outrage directed to politicians who are putting us in the largest debt in American history and refuse to consider bringing our troops home any time in the near future.  Instead, it's pointed toward homosexuals and Muslims, it's turned from the justified anger at a country that's being taken in the wrong direction and directed toward irrational hatred of "threatening" groups. 

We need this to change.  We need a lot of things to change, but the first thing is to demand we be heard by our politicians.  The people in power can no longer skate through elections on personal attacks and vague threats of what the "terrorists" want.  Terrorism is occuring in this country, in the form of stubborn dependence on a finite energy source, in the form of presidential indifference to torture and wiretapping, in the form of a blatant disregard to science, logic, reason, and expert opinion.  THIS is the terrorism we need to be combating and THIS is the terrorism that's going to weaken this country to a real terrorist attack. 

So I propose a new war: a war against apathy and disenchantment.  Nothing will get done without brave, everyday Americans who are willing to stand up for what's right.

The decision is yours: what will America stand for?"