Thursday, March 28, 2024

My America!

August 15, 2018 by  
Filed under Highlights

My America!

BY ERIC TROY, M.A.

Eric Troy

On July 4, we celebrated our country’s 242 years of independence from the British Empire and adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress. There were parades, fireworks, cookouts, concerts and the all-American pastime of baseball.

But one of the most important activities is honoring family. However you define family, we should follow the impulse to pay homage to those who paved the way for us to celebrate what it really means to be “independent.”

Independence is defined as “freedom from control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.” As we look at the state of affairs in our country today, independent thought has been lost — and that loss has had a major impact on what makes our families and country better. Diversity in thinking, and respect for each other’s views, are the basis of what it means to be an American. This diversity in thinking should never be justified with hatred and the degrading of others.

Unfortunately, today’s climate has elevated an agenda that there is a white America and then everyone else. Just turn on the news or log on to social media: we are still seeing Black men and other persons of color, along with the LGBT community, being treated like they don’t belong in America. It seems like we have turned back time to the 1960s.

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty states “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” It is my hope that — as we continue to celebrate our country’s independence — we don’t forget the value of independent thinking and continue to understand it is allows America to become greater in its “independence.”

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