by Tom Hoefling
Not long ago someone asked me: “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” My response? “Neither. I’m an American.”
So, what is an American?
First, a true American believes in God, understanding that our rights are the free gift of the One Who created us, that they didn't come from any man, and that those precious rights are therefore unalienable.
Second, an American believes that every person has equal standing before God. He doesn’t think he is better than anyone else, and he doesn’t believe anyone else is better than him. He knows that, by nature or circumstance, we have differing gifts, abilities, opportunities, and stations in life, but that we all possess the same intrinsic rights to life, liberty, private property, and equal justice.
Third, an American knows what government is for: To protect the God-given rights of each and every individual person, and to secure the nation as a whole.
Fourth, an American understands that the only just government is that which receives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. He knows that in America, as the state motto of South Dakota asserts, “the people are sovereign under God.”
Of course, this was spelled out much more eloquently than I could ever express by Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries in the founding paragraph of this country in our nation’s charter, the Declaration of Independence:
“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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”Real Americans take their oaths made before God to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States very seriously, and are willing to sincerely pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in the fulfillment of the purposes it states:
“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.”Real Americans not only believe in God and are committed to the protection of unalienable rights, they love God. They love what is right and just. They rail at tyranny, cruelty, and injustice.
The state motto of Virginia remains “SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS,” or “thus ever to tyrants.”
A song little known today, but very popular during the Revolutionary War - at the time, in fact, considered to be our unofficial national anthem - was a song called “Chester”. Here are the lyrics:
Let tyrants shake their iron rod,King George became a tyrant, and Americans, with God's help, against the longest of odds, whipped him.
And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England's God forever reigns.
Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,
With Prescot and Cornwallis join'd,
Together plot our Overthrow,
In one Infernal league combin'd.
When God inspir'd us for the fight,
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc'd,
Their ships were Shatter'd in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our Coast.
The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet'rans flee before our Youth,
And Gen'rals yield to beardless Boys.
What grateful Off'ring shall we bring?
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud Halleluiahs let us Sing,
And praise his name on ev'ry Chord.
The Barbary Pirates terrorized our shipping. So the Americans, with God's help, whipped them.
The British soon forgot the whipping they had received and came back for more, so the Americans, with God's help, whipped them again.
With God's help, we whipped the Mexicans. We whipped the Spaniards. We whipped each other (the bloodiest and costliest whipping of all). We whipped the Germans and the Italians, and then when over the course of a couple of decades they forgot, we whipped them again. We whipped the Japanese. We whipped the Communist North Koreans and North Vietnamese, no matter what the revisionists would have you believe. We whipped the Soviets. We whipped the Islamists. We hung Saddam Hussein.
That’s what Americans do. We trust God, and we crush tyrants.
Why? Because we have a heart for the tyrant’s victims. We love liberty. Americans have always been willing to risk it all to protect this country and its people, and to stand boldly and courageously for what is right.
Do we still face serious external threats? Yes, we most certainly do. The world never lacks for tyrants.
Is that the biggest threat to the existence of the United States of America in liberty? No. The real peril lies within, the danger that we will finally and completely quit trusting God and thereby lose our collective grip on what it means to be an American.
Abraham Lincoln said it best:
"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means
shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
Is your true American heart outraged that thousands more defenseless little American children were slaughtered today in Planned Parenthood’s bloody houses of barbarism, where tens of millions have already been cruelly killed?
Are you disgusted that the political and legal elites call this slaughter “legal,” and continue to deny the humanity of those little persons?
Are you indignant that the clear imperative words of our Constitution, which strictly forbid the killing of any innocent person, are ignored?
Are you incensed that judges usurp the legislative mandate and execute lawless edicts from the bench, and that those who are in fact constitutionally empowered to make and execute the laws despise their sworn duty and allow them to get away with it?
Are you angry with those who redefine the word “marriage” and misuse the legal and political process to impose a deviant sexual practice on us and our children, one that the people have overwhelmingly rejected time and again?
Are you sick and tired of this government’s constant encroachments on our precious liberties, their incessant picking of our pockets, and their failure in their constitutional obligations to secure our states against invasion by the tens of millions of foreign nationals who continue to stream across our open borders?
Are you beyond patience or tolerance for those who are betraying our posterity for their own short-term political gain, sacrificing our future on the altar of their insane, utopian, socialist agenda?
I know I am.
It's time to turn back to God, not just in words, but in deeds. It's time for Americans to be Americans again. Tyrants, internal or external, petty or great, can only have their way when the people provide their silent, craven, cowardly consent. As Edmund Burke said:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Once again, the closing question of our national anthem is posed:
“O say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”
Only you can truly answer that eternal question, and the truth of it will be seen finally in what you do, not merely in what you say.
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"It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains." - Patrick Henry
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