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American paper hey all...i am posting my paper because I need lots of help with it. I think it sucks basically. I have no idea what to do about it. does it sounds too much like a government rant? does it really define american? I am wondering if it too simplistic. I am also wondering if it is going to get poor marks. If so I might move this to pass/fail if I can still. grr...not sure how hard this grading will be so pray that it's not! only other news is that my father has the old machine back up but no idea how to do anything on it, referred him to the old friends to get him tutored, and my run with D is on for tomorrow. If you need good smut check the last entry and enjoy the perverted Family Circus below...more to be up on the yahoo site! America Degenerated �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 Declaration of Independence Those immortal words tend to capture the essence of what was an American. A person who understood the need to stand up for their rights, to keep their government under their control, to embrace the ideal of the American Dream where they can live, worship, and pursue your dreams, whatever they might be. These Americans also knew the need to shoulder the responsibility of protecting their rights and not give them up to the government in order to feel more secure. These founding fathers and those that continue to follow in their footsteps of protecting and pursuing the ideals of the nation are what I think of when I picture Americans. Sadly, we as a nation strain to find individuals of this caliber within our borders and instead those of us who are born within the United States today tend to take our freedoms for granted and give up our rights to the government. No longer do the majority of Americans fight for our right to pursue happiness as we see fit but those that do are the true American people. In this essay I plan to show the ideals that early Americans fought for and real Americans believe in and also the condition of our modern state of affairs where Americans and not merely citizens of the U.S. are few and far between. In the beginning America began as a dream of a nation separate from British sovereignty, apart from a country that deigned to tax and rule without input from the people whose laws it created. The Founding Fathers yearned for a land that where they could design their own government with direct input from the people and where the people would want to control their own government and not have it control them. Freedom meant a lot to our forefathers, so much so that they were willing to die for it, and at that point this nation was merely an experiment. I believe that the final lines to the Declaration of Independence quoted above perfectly capture their spirit and their needs. Even without the Bill of Rights the three basic needs are stated, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life appears as almost a given to modern America but the ideals of true liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness without barriers still amazes me, and I still feel that these two principles create the American Dream that thousands of foreigners rush to the States to attempt today. The concept of liberty in itself is enough to base a nation on but America�s version of liberty has slowly been stripped away. Once the press was free to publish what it pleased but now ��the newspapers, magazines, and broadcasting stations of our great nation have lost the courage to use this freedom. They have allowed themselves to be censored, not by the government, but by the horrid specter of Social Conformity and Niceness.� (Japikse, 9). We no longer allow controversial ideas on the airwaves of major news broadcasts because only about four or five corporations control our popular media. Certainly those who can afford to run a small paper or organize a demonstration will continue to be heard but the numbers of citizens reading papers or going to rallies is dropping. We also are no longer free from taxes, a major issue that our nation was based upon, and instead are reminded of our social duty every year when we dread being audited or when we see how much smaller our paycheck is due to FICA. We are quickly losing our freedom to firearms with every new law passed to keep citizens further from handguns even though our military grows larger and larger with each passing year. I am not suggesting that welfare programs and an armed nation is purely negative but without the people being free to speak out for their causes, keep their own earnings, or maintain a state militia the government will continue to remove more and more freedoms until we cannot see how far we have degenerated from the real America of the dream. Freedom also extends to the freedom to pursue happiness, which is also being quietly taken away from Americans. Conservatives question that clause and see it as a rhetorical flourish on Jefferson�s part but if it was ��such a big, fat, fucking mistake, then our wise founding fathers would have realized it in the eleven years that passed between the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the first meeting of the Constitutional Congress,� (Savage, 5) and I am sure they would have done something about it then. Instead, they left that document alone and continued to improve upon it by openly stating what our real rights were in hopes to prevent the future government from discarding them. The right to pursue happiness is vague and hence they needed to specify their meaning more clearly in the Bill of Rights, which appears to me we have been giving away. �We did not envision a country where everyone was protected from every possible harm; quite the opposite, we envisioned a country where everyone had every possible chance to succeed,� (Japiske, 126) and now �The shells of freedom are still there but the substance has long ago been squandered. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that only 20 percent of our original liberty remains, and perhaps 10 percent of our freedom.� (Japiske, 124) This may sound dire but realize that for our protection recreational drugs and prostitution are illegal even though it is that illegal status that makes them so harmful, similar to prohibition�s effect on the underground crime circuit, and as a majority we fail to stand up for these rights. Consider the aftermath of 9/11 where citizens are more than willing to trade their right to privacy in order to feel secure in their homes. True security will never exist but for most Americans the illusion of safety is enough because they fail to value and protect the rights we need so badly. This failure to take on our active responsibilities as Americans is what forces me to state that most citizens of the States are not Americans. Americans are people who understand their rights and want to maintain them. Americans know that the government is quietly taking away and receiving people�s liberties and they want to work against this tide. Americans want to participate in their government in order to have representation, to stand up for that major ideal our founding fathers yearned for, input into the government. Many citizens from around the world burn to live and work in the United States because of our high amount of freedom compared with the rest of the world and I believe that most of the first generation citizens understand their responsibility to the nation. It is only those of us who have lived here for generations who are starting to forget it. America cannot exist without Americans but they are becoming a rare breed. We need more bold and daring men and women like Ben Franklin who knew how to campaign against politicians who wanted to steal away a few more rights for the government and not for its citizens. Franklin stood up for a small government, knowing that a large one would crave too much power, and we need to do the same. If, as citizens of the greatest country on earth and the only superpower left on the planet, we want to become real Americans we need to know more about politics and our government than we know about Reality TV. We need to become motivated to pursue happiness and protect that unalienable right from those who wish to see it taken away. Whether sinner or saint, we need to know what makes us happy but also what makes other people happy and understand that as a government both sides must be protected. Conservatives may not like the idea of gay marriage and see it as purely sinful but if such a union makes two people happier as Americans and doesn�t harm any other party we should understand that and open our minds to the idea. We cannot sit idly by anymore if having the injustice of the government removing our liberties must continue. Citizens may be able to watch Comedy Central and laugh themselves our of freedom but Americans must work to defend it because it is our responsibility to ourselves and to our future as a nation. So in short, I believe that an American is one who defends our basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone. It may not be always a moral pursuit but it needs to be legal so long as it harmless to anyone else. Americans understand their responsibilities to their nation to act as informed citizens and to speak out against the removal of our basic rights. These rights do not split along the lines of either political party but in fact transgress them, as do their defenders. We may not come to an agreement on many issues but I think that on taking a stand for our founding ideals all Americans will concur that it needs to happen and it needs to happen soon before that last ten or twenty percent is gone completely. Works Cited Japikse, Carl ed. Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School. Columbus, Ohio: Enthea Press, 1990. Savage, Dan. Skipping Towards Gomorrah. New York: Dutton, 2002
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