I chose to do my art project on the Dominant American Values that we were taught about in class. When I first started out doing the project, I tried to think about what message I wanted my art to convey. My original idea was, well, pretty unoriginal. I assumed I would just do an art project that showed each value used in day-to-day life. The more I thought about the topic, however, the more problems I ran into. You see, I was trying to think of ways to prove that each of the things we were taught about in class actually were American values. The problems that I kept bumping up against all had one root: the American values we were taught about in class are, well, not American values at all. The curriculum was...wrong. Wow. That certainly threw me for a loop. I then had to ask the question, "how do I prove something that is false?" I am a superior lier. I guess I could've used my expert skills in the art of deception to pull off this art project without stumbling onto a conclusion that is *gasp* politically incorrect! But, then again, when have I ever worried about offending someone? So I decided to make my art project represent the truth, or at least what I perceive to be the truth.
Here are the dominant American values that were taught in class: order and security; achievement and success; activity and work; moral orientation; efficiency and practicality; progress; material comfort; freedom; equality; humanitarianism; science; nationalism and patriotism; democracy; racism and group superiority.
Now, those things all sound pretty great. And politically correct. But they aren't American values.
As Americans, we say we value order and security. In fact, just last night our president said in his address regarding the San Bernardino shooting that "The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us." Unfortunately, he later disproved that when he said "We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria." What? Huh? Wait...you mean we aren't going to fight the terrorists? I'm confused, if we refuse to fight, how do we win? Do we destroy them with our minds? Luckily, Obama jumped in with an answer to my questions when he said "we will continue to provide training and equipment to tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting ISIL on the ground so that we take away their safe havens." Right, so we just sit back and hope that eventually, someone else will handle the problem. Until then, I guess we just wait until the terrorists come to us. You know, that really is a shame. I like the new freedom tower and all the other tall, shiny buildings in New York, and I think our nation's capital is really pretty, too. It's really gonna suck when some idiot who thinks he has a purpose knocks one of those down in an attempt to go out in a blaze of terrorist glory! Tell me this, when did we become such cowards? I know for a fact that order and security used to be one of our values. When did we throw that away? We don't even value our police officers anymore. Whenever one of them does their job, and gets a criminal off the streets, we just have to jump in and criticize. "Oh, but that criminal was black..." "That guy he shot was black." "That person he pulled over was black." Yep. Criminals can be black. In fact, 60% of all criminals are black, which is impressive because they only make up 30% of the population. But you know what? If they're black, and they happen to be speeding, let's just let it slide so we can be politically correct. Because THAT isn't at all discriminatory towards ALL other races. Speaking of which, why was racism and group superiority on my list? It definitely is still one of our values. Just listen to the entire last half of President Obama's speech. He spent a good portion of his speech last night talking about how we can't blame Islam for the actions of ISIS. Here is my question. Why does it matter what religion they are? Are muslims so much more important than everyone else that he had to spend that much time defending them? How about this? I don't care one bit what religion you are. I don't care if you are white or black or mexican or canadian or from the Dominican Republic. I don't care what age you are or how much money you make every year. If you want to harm the U.S., then we will ANNIHILATE you. The moment you decide to harm us, you put a target on your own back and YOU. WILL. DIE. End of story. If you want to practice your religion in peace, good for you, but if your religion says to harm the U.S., much like the Quran tells to Muslims, and you decide to act on it, much like radical Muslims do, it isn't a discriminatory act when the U.S. kills you. Why couldn't Obama have said that in his speech? Why did he have to bring race into it? Why did he have to let race overshadow the real issue? Because our society still values race.
I actually do think that racism and group superiority are still American values, but I still put it on my list of things to disprove because I think it was explained incorrectly in class. What I got out of the class discussion on racism and superiority is this: poor black people, slavery, poor females, slavery, unequal income, slavery, unequal police treatment, women didn't have the right to vote, etc., etc.. Well good honking grief. I'll tell you one thing Americans are good at: holding a grudge. Another thing Americans are good at (specifically those of my generation): regurgitating whatever opinion is politically correct in order to avoid actually having to think for themselves. Whenever I see a black person, I don't feel one bit sorry about slavery. Wanna know why? BECAUSE I DIDN'T ENSLAVE ANYBODY! In fact, my mother didn't enslave anybody, my grandmother didn't enslave anybody, my great-grandmother didn't enslave anybody, and ALL of those people are from the DEEP SOUTH. Can we not get over that already? Same thing with voting rights. WOMEN CAN VOTE NOW. It's high time they get off their high horse. So the type of racism and the type of group superiority (whites against blacks and men against women) that we seem to think is still one of our values, is not really one of our values. Racism and group superiority is, however. It just isn't whites against blacks. Now it is more blacks against whites. Take the Mizzou issue for example. The president was forced to resign. Why? A few black people demanded it because their feelings were hurt. Some racist acts occurred on campus and the black students decided to take a stand. They thought that the president wasn't doing enough to solve the racism issues on campus. I mean all he did was have certain students KICKED OUT OF THE COLLEGE for saying racial slurs and IMPLEMENT A WHOLE NEW MANDATORY FRESHMAN COURSE on being sensitive to all races. How could he not have done more? I mean, I totally understand that it is wrong to shout the N word at a black person, and I get that it is not okay to dump cotton on the black student center, but here is the amazing thing: if it had been a bunch of white kids protesting, saying that they felt like black students were being racist towards them, the issue would've been laughed off. It wouldn't have gotten the media coverage that it did, it wouldn't have gotten the support that it did, and the president certainly wouldn't have resigned. I know for a fact that the racism on campus DOES go both ways. My dad is a professor at Mizzou and he has seen, with his own eyes, awful racism directed towards whites. However, that seems to be a non-issue. Who cares about white people in today's society? As long as the black people don't have their feelings hurt, then all is well. Seriously though, what would happen if the black students dumped something on the white student center? Oh, that's right. THERE IS NO WHITE STUDENT CENTER. Tell me how THAT isn't racist. And let's also talk for a second about group superiority, specifically the men vs women debacle. "Women get paid less, women are seen as inferior to men, blah, blah, blah." Yep. In many jobs, women are paid less. Women also work less, so I'm not sure why people see that as such a confusing thing. Women take maternity leave more than men. Women vacation more than men (women vacation, on average, every 10 months, compared to men's 12 month average). Women are also more likely to sue for harassment and cost business owners a lot of money in legal fees. Makes sense to me that they get paid less. But, in today's society, that isn't ok. So we overcorrect this "mistake" of not paying women enough by essentially elevating women in social status. So we have gone from women being inferior to women being superior. As a young woman myself, I am told by society that I can't ever rely on a man. And I'm not a strong woman if I choose to marry and stay home with my kids. In order to be strong I must work and try to show up every man I come across. Well, that is possibly the most destructive thing society could tell me. Good job society! Way to make me feel like crap! So what if I want to get married? So what if I would like to have children and actually raise those children myself? So what if I want my marriage to be about my husband and I relying on each other? How does that make me weak? Both my mother and my grandmother had those ideals, and they are two of the strongest people I have ever met. So don't tell me for a second that we still value racism against blacks and group superiority against women. No, we have moved past those things as a society and we are poisoning our next generation with something entirely different. It still falls under the category of racism and group superiority, but it certainly isn't the type of racism and group superiority that we discussed in class.
Next I would like to talk about achievement and success. This certainly isn't one of our ideals today. Nope. Today we are so focused on handing out welfare to those too lazy to get a job, that we could care less about achievement and success. We would rather take a bunch of money from the rich and give it to the lazy than use the rich as an example of achievement and success, so maybe the lazy will get off the couch. The middle and higher classes in America represent achievement and success, and as a society, we want nothing more than to belittle their success by forcing them to share it with everyone else and then telling them it is the "right" thing to do. We have definitely thrown out this ideal. Right along with activity and work. When the successful people give a big part of their money to poor people without jobs, what need is there for activity and work? The rich will handle that, while the poor reap the benefits.
How about efficiency and practicality? I agree that one of these things is an American value. I think it is, however, quite impossible for them to both be American values. You see, the more efficient we get, the less practical we seem to be. Take Obamacare for example. Obama care is all about giving medical care to everyone! Sounds great, right? That is, until you realize the quality of that medical care. Obamacare certainly is efficient, but is it practical that people pay for sub-par medical care? Honestly, wouldn't it be better to just save the money? Today's society is all about being efficient, and so much so, that we have thrown practicality out the window.
Next up? Progress. Hey! Isn't that what we talked about last unit? Well, America certainly has had a lot of progress. We got rid of slavery, we got women the right to vote, we legalized the murder of innocent babies, we are even taking steps to ensure that people can't have a voiced opinion anymore if it qualifies as "hate speech". Yay! That all sounds like progress, right? Well, some of it does. Here is the problem. Many years ago, when slavery was still a reality and women were still treated as inferiors, progress was very much dependent upon fixing those things. After those things were fixed, however, I think that we, as a nation, started believing that the only way for progress to occur was through civil rights movements. So today, even though we really don't have any civil rights movements left, we have created some just so we can say that we are still progressing. Yay for us! Unfortunately, we have lost sight of what real progress is, which is why this is no longer a true American value. If we really cared about progress, we would be working to fix the fact that, compared to the rest of the world, we are seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, and twenty-second in science. We would be working toward fixing the national debt crisis, or working towards ending ISIS. But no. Instead we are working on redefining the word marriage, so no one's feelings are hurt.
And, while we are on that topic, let's just talk a little bit about moral orientation. Since when have we abandoned that ideal? First we legalize abortion, which is nothing short of murder. Next we redefine the word marriage because some people got their feelings hurt by the actual definition. News flash: the government didn't define the word marriage. In fact, religion defined that word. So whether you want the government to be religious or not, that word was not their's to redefine. Since when did we lose sight of these morals in our country? And here is the crazy part: we don't even admit that we are losing our morals. Nope, we blame science. We say that science says that fetuses aren't alive. Science says that we should teach evolution in schools. And the truth is, we don't even value science. We value liberalism, and we justify it with science. And when science fails to justify our moral short comings, we blame freedom and equality. Two more American values that we have lost track of.
Freedom used to mean the first amendment, and the second amendment, and all the other amendments after that. Freedom used to mean that everyone had the right to be human, and to act in whatever way they chose to so long as it didn't hurt anyone. Well, we don't care about that anymore. Take the baker in Chicago, for example. He refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, as should've been his right, his freedom. But, that made the gay couple upset, and we couldn't have that! So that baker almost lost his business. Why? Because he had the nerve to exercise freedom. And what about equality? Equality used to mean that everyone had the same rights. Nope. Not anymore. Now equality means that the more of a minority you are, the more opportunities you get. The more priority you get when applying for jobs or colleges. Now equality means that the more of a minority you are, the more you are catered to, just so you won't complain and make the majority look bad. We've even legalized murder, just so women can feel like they have rights! Then we throw democracy into the mix to justify our actions. We say that we do all of these things because it is what the American people want, but it isn't. It is what the most powerful group in America wants. And contrary to popular belief, that isn't the white people, or the Christians, or even the upper class citizens. Nope. It is those who chose to be politically correct in their beliefs.
And there lies the problem. The more I think about all of this, the more that I see that the underlying cause to all of these problems is that we are SO worried about being politically correct that we have lost sight of who we are. As a nation, and as a people. That is what my artwork represents. All of the values that are written on the outside of the canvas have been thrown by the wayside in our society today. They used to be our values, but in our quest to conform, we have lost them. And the funny thing is, we CHASE after conformity. We WANT it. But, once we have it, it cages us. It takes away our own identities. As far as the other values: material comfort, humanitarianism, nationalism, and patriotism, well, we've lost those, too. How can we be comfortable when our nation is going down the toilet? How can we help others when we can't even help ourselves. And most of all, how can we be patriotic when we don't even know who we are anymore? Political correctness, which, at it's core is really just conformity, had caged us. And the worst part is that we have the power to leave the cage anytime we want. We have the keys in our hand, but we refuse to use them. Because, to some extent, it is comfortable in the cage. We can't ever be different, because everyone else is in a cage as well. And we can't ever be wrong, because someone else controls our opinions. We like the cage we are in. And it blinds us.
I was going to just stop this project right there, but the more I think about this, the more it upsets me, so I have decided to do something about it. I have created my own list of what this country means to me, of the identity and the values that I hold dear. Here is that list:
To me, America means:
The right to learn to shoot a gun, and get a carry permit as soon as I am old enough.
The right to go to church, and the right to share my religion with others freely.
The right to accomplish whatever I want to accomplish in life, but also the right to make my own mistakes and learn from them.
The right to live on my own, own property, and also the right to marry and never work.
The right to stay home and raise my children while still having the ability to accomplish my goals.
The right to form my own opinions and share those opinions.
Having a dad who is willing to leave me to go overseas and fight for my rights.
Having an entire army of people who believe in this nation enough to die for it, to pay the ultimate price.
My list goes on and on, but those are the most important ones. I have unlocked my cage, and I have figured out what I believe and what I want this nation to stand for. And that is the nation I will stand for, that is the nation I will fight for, and that is the nation I want to grow up being a part of.
Here are the dominant American values that were taught in class: order and security; achievement and success; activity and work; moral orientation; efficiency and practicality; progress; material comfort; freedom; equality; humanitarianism; science; nationalism and patriotism; democracy; racism and group superiority.
Now, those things all sound pretty great. And politically correct. But they aren't American values.
As Americans, we say we value order and security. In fact, just last night our president said in his address regarding the San Bernardino shooting that "The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us." Unfortunately, he later disproved that when he said "We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria." What? Huh? Wait...you mean we aren't going to fight the terrorists? I'm confused, if we refuse to fight, how do we win? Do we destroy them with our minds? Luckily, Obama jumped in with an answer to my questions when he said "we will continue to provide training and equipment to tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting ISIL on the ground so that we take away their safe havens." Right, so we just sit back and hope that eventually, someone else will handle the problem. Until then, I guess we just wait until the terrorists come to us. You know, that really is a shame. I like the new freedom tower and all the other tall, shiny buildings in New York, and I think our nation's capital is really pretty, too. It's really gonna suck when some idiot who thinks he has a purpose knocks one of those down in an attempt to go out in a blaze of terrorist glory! Tell me this, when did we become such cowards? I know for a fact that order and security used to be one of our values. When did we throw that away? We don't even value our police officers anymore. Whenever one of them does their job, and gets a criminal off the streets, we just have to jump in and criticize. "Oh, but that criminal was black..." "That guy he shot was black." "That person he pulled over was black." Yep. Criminals can be black. In fact, 60% of all criminals are black, which is impressive because they only make up 30% of the population. But you know what? If they're black, and they happen to be speeding, let's just let it slide so we can be politically correct. Because THAT isn't at all discriminatory towards ALL other races. Speaking of which, why was racism and group superiority on my list? It definitely is still one of our values. Just listen to the entire last half of President Obama's speech. He spent a good portion of his speech last night talking about how we can't blame Islam for the actions of ISIS. Here is my question. Why does it matter what religion they are? Are muslims so much more important than everyone else that he had to spend that much time defending them? How about this? I don't care one bit what religion you are. I don't care if you are white or black or mexican or canadian or from the Dominican Republic. I don't care what age you are or how much money you make every year. If you want to harm the U.S., then we will ANNIHILATE you. The moment you decide to harm us, you put a target on your own back and YOU. WILL. DIE. End of story. If you want to practice your religion in peace, good for you, but if your religion says to harm the U.S., much like the Quran tells to Muslims, and you decide to act on it, much like radical Muslims do, it isn't a discriminatory act when the U.S. kills you. Why couldn't Obama have said that in his speech? Why did he have to bring race into it? Why did he have to let race overshadow the real issue? Because our society still values race.
I actually do think that racism and group superiority are still American values, but I still put it on my list of things to disprove because I think it was explained incorrectly in class. What I got out of the class discussion on racism and superiority is this: poor black people, slavery, poor females, slavery, unequal income, slavery, unequal police treatment, women didn't have the right to vote, etc., etc.. Well good honking grief. I'll tell you one thing Americans are good at: holding a grudge. Another thing Americans are good at (specifically those of my generation): regurgitating whatever opinion is politically correct in order to avoid actually having to think for themselves. Whenever I see a black person, I don't feel one bit sorry about slavery. Wanna know why? BECAUSE I DIDN'T ENSLAVE ANYBODY! In fact, my mother didn't enslave anybody, my grandmother didn't enslave anybody, my great-grandmother didn't enslave anybody, and ALL of those people are from the DEEP SOUTH. Can we not get over that already? Same thing with voting rights. WOMEN CAN VOTE NOW. It's high time they get off their high horse. So the type of racism and the type of group superiority (whites against blacks and men against women) that we seem to think is still one of our values, is not really one of our values. Racism and group superiority is, however. It just isn't whites against blacks. Now it is more blacks against whites. Take the Mizzou issue for example. The president was forced to resign. Why? A few black people demanded it because their feelings were hurt. Some racist acts occurred on campus and the black students decided to take a stand. They thought that the president wasn't doing enough to solve the racism issues on campus. I mean all he did was have certain students KICKED OUT OF THE COLLEGE for saying racial slurs and IMPLEMENT A WHOLE NEW MANDATORY FRESHMAN COURSE on being sensitive to all races. How could he not have done more? I mean, I totally understand that it is wrong to shout the N word at a black person, and I get that it is not okay to dump cotton on the black student center, but here is the amazing thing: if it had been a bunch of white kids protesting, saying that they felt like black students were being racist towards them, the issue would've been laughed off. It wouldn't have gotten the media coverage that it did, it wouldn't have gotten the support that it did, and the president certainly wouldn't have resigned. I know for a fact that the racism on campus DOES go both ways. My dad is a professor at Mizzou and he has seen, with his own eyes, awful racism directed towards whites. However, that seems to be a non-issue. Who cares about white people in today's society? As long as the black people don't have their feelings hurt, then all is well. Seriously though, what would happen if the black students dumped something on the white student center? Oh, that's right. THERE IS NO WHITE STUDENT CENTER. Tell me how THAT isn't racist. And let's also talk for a second about group superiority, specifically the men vs women debacle. "Women get paid less, women are seen as inferior to men, blah, blah, blah." Yep. In many jobs, women are paid less. Women also work less, so I'm not sure why people see that as such a confusing thing. Women take maternity leave more than men. Women vacation more than men (women vacation, on average, every 10 months, compared to men's 12 month average). Women are also more likely to sue for harassment and cost business owners a lot of money in legal fees. Makes sense to me that they get paid less. But, in today's society, that isn't ok. So we overcorrect this "mistake" of not paying women enough by essentially elevating women in social status. So we have gone from women being inferior to women being superior. As a young woman myself, I am told by society that I can't ever rely on a man. And I'm not a strong woman if I choose to marry and stay home with my kids. In order to be strong I must work and try to show up every man I come across. Well, that is possibly the most destructive thing society could tell me. Good job society! Way to make me feel like crap! So what if I want to get married? So what if I would like to have children and actually raise those children myself? So what if I want my marriage to be about my husband and I relying on each other? How does that make me weak? Both my mother and my grandmother had those ideals, and they are two of the strongest people I have ever met. So don't tell me for a second that we still value racism against blacks and group superiority against women. No, we have moved past those things as a society and we are poisoning our next generation with something entirely different. It still falls under the category of racism and group superiority, but it certainly isn't the type of racism and group superiority that we discussed in class.
Next I would like to talk about achievement and success. This certainly isn't one of our ideals today. Nope. Today we are so focused on handing out welfare to those too lazy to get a job, that we could care less about achievement and success. We would rather take a bunch of money from the rich and give it to the lazy than use the rich as an example of achievement and success, so maybe the lazy will get off the couch. The middle and higher classes in America represent achievement and success, and as a society, we want nothing more than to belittle their success by forcing them to share it with everyone else and then telling them it is the "right" thing to do. We have definitely thrown out this ideal. Right along with activity and work. When the successful people give a big part of their money to poor people without jobs, what need is there for activity and work? The rich will handle that, while the poor reap the benefits.
How about efficiency and practicality? I agree that one of these things is an American value. I think it is, however, quite impossible for them to both be American values. You see, the more efficient we get, the less practical we seem to be. Take Obamacare for example. Obama care is all about giving medical care to everyone! Sounds great, right? That is, until you realize the quality of that medical care. Obamacare certainly is efficient, but is it practical that people pay for sub-par medical care? Honestly, wouldn't it be better to just save the money? Today's society is all about being efficient, and so much so, that we have thrown practicality out the window.
Next up? Progress. Hey! Isn't that what we talked about last unit? Well, America certainly has had a lot of progress. We got rid of slavery, we got women the right to vote, we legalized the murder of innocent babies, we are even taking steps to ensure that people can't have a voiced opinion anymore if it qualifies as "hate speech". Yay! That all sounds like progress, right? Well, some of it does. Here is the problem. Many years ago, when slavery was still a reality and women were still treated as inferiors, progress was very much dependent upon fixing those things. After those things were fixed, however, I think that we, as a nation, started believing that the only way for progress to occur was through civil rights movements. So today, even though we really don't have any civil rights movements left, we have created some just so we can say that we are still progressing. Yay for us! Unfortunately, we have lost sight of what real progress is, which is why this is no longer a true American value. If we really cared about progress, we would be working to fix the fact that, compared to the rest of the world, we are seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, and twenty-second in science. We would be working toward fixing the national debt crisis, or working towards ending ISIS. But no. Instead we are working on redefining the word marriage, so no one's feelings are hurt.
And, while we are on that topic, let's just talk a little bit about moral orientation. Since when have we abandoned that ideal? First we legalize abortion, which is nothing short of murder. Next we redefine the word marriage because some people got their feelings hurt by the actual definition. News flash: the government didn't define the word marriage. In fact, religion defined that word. So whether you want the government to be religious or not, that word was not their's to redefine. Since when did we lose sight of these morals in our country? And here is the crazy part: we don't even admit that we are losing our morals. Nope, we blame science. We say that science says that fetuses aren't alive. Science says that we should teach evolution in schools. And the truth is, we don't even value science. We value liberalism, and we justify it with science. And when science fails to justify our moral short comings, we blame freedom and equality. Two more American values that we have lost track of.
Freedom used to mean the first amendment, and the second amendment, and all the other amendments after that. Freedom used to mean that everyone had the right to be human, and to act in whatever way they chose to so long as it didn't hurt anyone. Well, we don't care about that anymore. Take the baker in Chicago, for example. He refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, as should've been his right, his freedom. But, that made the gay couple upset, and we couldn't have that! So that baker almost lost his business. Why? Because he had the nerve to exercise freedom. And what about equality? Equality used to mean that everyone had the same rights. Nope. Not anymore. Now equality means that the more of a minority you are, the more opportunities you get. The more priority you get when applying for jobs or colleges. Now equality means that the more of a minority you are, the more you are catered to, just so you won't complain and make the majority look bad. We've even legalized murder, just so women can feel like they have rights! Then we throw democracy into the mix to justify our actions. We say that we do all of these things because it is what the American people want, but it isn't. It is what the most powerful group in America wants. And contrary to popular belief, that isn't the white people, or the Christians, or even the upper class citizens. Nope. It is those who chose to be politically correct in their beliefs.
And there lies the problem. The more I think about all of this, the more that I see that the underlying cause to all of these problems is that we are SO worried about being politically correct that we have lost sight of who we are. As a nation, and as a people. That is what my artwork represents. All of the values that are written on the outside of the canvas have been thrown by the wayside in our society today. They used to be our values, but in our quest to conform, we have lost them. And the funny thing is, we CHASE after conformity. We WANT it. But, once we have it, it cages us. It takes away our own identities. As far as the other values: material comfort, humanitarianism, nationalism, and patriotism, well, we've lost those, too. How can we be comfortable when our nation is going down the toilet? How can we help others when we can't even help ourselves. And most of all, how can we be patriotic when we don't even know who we are anymore? Political correctness, which, at it's core is really just conformity, had caged us. And the worst part is that we have the power to leave the cage anytime we want. We have the keys in our hand, but we refuse to use them. Because, to some extent, it is comfortable in the cage. We can't ever be different, because everyone else is in a cage as well. And we can't ever be wrong, because someone else controls our opinions. We like the cage we are in. And it blinds us.
I was going to just stop this project right there, but the more I think about this, the more it upsets me, so I have decided to do something about it. I have created my own list of what this country means to me, of the identity and the values that I hold dear. Here is that list:
To me, America means:
The right to learn to shoot a gun, and get a carry permit as soon as I am old enough.
The right to go to church, and the right to share my religion with others freely.
The right to accomplish whatever I want to accomplish in life, but also the right to make my own mistakes and learn from them.
The right to live on my own, own property, and also the right to marry and never work.
The right to stay home and raise my children while still having the ability to accomplish my goals.
The right to form my own opinions and share those opinions.
Having a dad who is willing to leave me to go overseas and fight for my rights.
Having an entire army of people who believe in this nation enough to die for it, to pay the ultimate price.
My list goes on and on, but those are the most important ones. I have unlocked my cage, and I have figured out what I believe and what I want this nation to stand for. And that is the nation I will stand for, that is the nation I will fight for, and that is the nation I want to grow up being a part of.