What is patriotism? What does it mean to you? Well, I think I know what patriotism is. To me, patriotism is respect, pride, knowledge, and the willingness to fight for your country if the need arises for soldiers. Everyone who is able to fight should be rushing to be the first to sign up to help their country in a time of need. I know if the need for soldiers was great and no one else would volunteer or no one else was able to fight, I would volunteer in a heartbeat no matter what age I was or what condition I was in, I would be there to help protect my country so people would have a place to live in the future where they could consider themselves free.
Not many people respect what we have as a free, independent, patriotic country. They don’t realize how much work it has taken by their forefathers to get this country to this point of freedom and independence. People take for granted too often that we have the right to say what we please, dress how we please, eat what we want to eat, vote how we want to vote, live where we want to live, drive what we want to drive, listen to what we want, watch what we want to watch on T.V., and much much more. All anyone ever cares about is what they want as an individual and not as one giant family of independent Americans. These kind of people don’t realize that without the Revolutionary War we might not be able to do the simplest things that we take for granted today, such as walking on the side walk, talking on the phone, shopping at a mall, or from a catalog, or in some cases even ordering items off of the T.V.
If we were still controlled by another country today, such as the British, or the French, or even some small unknown group of people that live in Antarctica, we might have it as bad as the starving in Africa, the killing in Bosnia, or it might even be as bad as Hitler’s movement to eliminate the Jews, only everybody in North America was to be eliminated. We would not be free from acts like this if the patriots of the 1800's, 1700's, and even the 1600's and earlier, had not fought for their rights, and others rights, to live as they please in a patriotic country that is free and independent. This is what our forefathers left behind for us when they passed on. They left America, “The land of the free, and the home of the brave”.
People need to start being brave instead of just being free. They need to strive for what is best for them and their fellow American citizens and then stand up for those rights. Rights that the Constitution of the United States of America allows them to have and to form. They need to stop being violent to others because they do not believe in the same thing as them. Instead they need to respect them for having the courage to believe in something different than everybody else. They need to realize that it doesn’t matter what race, religion, sex, or color of skin a person has, they are still united by one thing and one thing only, the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution entitles all citizens of the United States to the same rights. If somebody doesn’t like how things are run in this free, independent, patriotic country then they need to leave and take their problems somewhere else. Someplace where they can see what it is like to live without the rights American citizens have. Such as countries where people are suffering and dying every day from starvation, dehydration, diseases, war, and many other unrightful causes of death.
Someplace where people go through these terrifying ordeals everyday. Some countries have no patriotism, even though they have been fighting for hundreds of years to have it. If they would just stop the foolishness and base their country on how the United States is run, they could live as happily and freely as we American citizens do.
This is what being a citizen of a patriotic country means to me, and I think it should mean this or more to you and your fellow citizens of the United States of America.