It’s likely
that all my readers have gone through a commencement exercise. You remember the color, the joyfulness, that
there were many onlookers proud of you and hoping for your future success and
you remember that there were speakers. But you don’t remember what they
said. You had other things on your mind.
There was
also a commencement of this new nation when it declared its independence from
England in 1776 (and formalized in 1789 when our Constitution was ratified)
that we combine for convenience and celebrate on the 4th of July.
The second sentence of The Declaration of Independence famously said:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.
The preamble of the Constitution of the United States readS:
We the People of the United States, in Order to
form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution for the United States of America.
In order to “provide
for the common defense” of these principles “we the people” must more
frequently—I would even say daily—remember that as each new day ‘commences’
(i.e., we have a new Commencement) we have a personal responsibility to defend in
our sphere of influence, no matter how small it may be perceived, civilization
itself.
There is a
time to lay down arms, and there is a time to take them up, and that we are now
in a time to take them up should be “self evident.” We have a right protected by our Constitution
to “keep and bear arms” to defend against and preempt barbarous attacks upon
our persons and our country and our way of life. Civilization is increasingly vulnerable
not only to fanatic terrorists, it is
vulnerable to cowardice and betrayal.
Our education should supply us with a memory of a thousand struggles, of
thousands of battles, and of millions of those who fell and now stand with
honor to establish and defend those principles that in these documents should
be “self-evident” and personally subscribed to if we too are truly Americans.
If
civilization can be attacked on many fronts (e.g., the many venues chosen by suicide
bombers and terrorists; a hostile press and media; some self-serving
politicians, a decadent ‘entertainment’ industry; a law-breaking populace of
certain citizen and non-citizen groups, mobs, and deranged individuals) it can
also be defended on many fronts.
We may not
have to bear arms such as guns, but we can bear our voices and our consciences,
our personal convictions and our example and not cave in to pressures of a weak
and decadent society. We can volunteer
to serve in many good causes, we can write our elected leaders, we can write
our blogs, or letters to the editor of our newspaper opinion pages, we can
write our letters and notes to our friends and relatives, we can salute and fly
our flag, sing our National Anthem,
personally obey the laws of the land—we can take a stand and thereby we can
stand out and we can make a difference.
Will it take
sacrifice? Yes. Sacrifice probably of time, of income,
position, title, acceptance of fair-weather friends, perhaps even of life. But what will be earned is a kind of
battlefield commission that will give you neither rank nor insignia nor
anything but honor. The sense of honor may be slow to awaken in
some of us but if it exists in enough of us it will prevail for it always has,
and that is what got us here in the 241 years since we declared that we were a
united people. United in great
principles that the free world, the decent world, has always respected and
sought to become part of because they sensed deep-down that it was “endowed by
its Creator.” People of the world have
always in far greater numbers sought to come here than to leave here.
