America is a country of great dreams, great ideas, great wrongs, and great rights.  Our great dreams are peace and prosperity for all who want to work towards those goals, denying none the opportunity.  Our great ideas are the ideas of each individual to live a life of liberty in the pursuit of happiness, with none saying us nay, to pursue whatever we wish, and to prosper as we best we can on our own merit.  Our great wrongs have been in denial of rights to segmented populations, but unlike other countries, this was a partial denial.  Partial in that those who would be denied their rights in one place, moved to another and pursued their dreams without having to leave their country.  Most of all, our country is a country of great rights, and our constitution and our way of government insures that every individual, every single citizen of these United States of America, live free, with the right to be born in poverty and be able to have a good education, become a member of the greatest military on the planet, all volunteer, pursue any career they wish,  love and marry anyone they want, achieve the highest office in the land, without the fear of being ostracized or denied these rights.

We have had our dark periods in our country’s history.  Yet, for a country that is only 250 or so years old, so young, most European, Middle East, African and Asian countries think of us as children, we have achieved that dream most other countries can only dream of.  Yes, we have denied franchise to several classes of citizens.  But, unlike India, China, France, we have a system of checks and balances that struck down those laws and acts that denied the franchises, and have lifted every citizen to the same level. This didn’t take centuries.  This didn’t take negotiating with monarchs, nobles, and peasants.  This was done by the people of these United States, the citizens, these are the ones who said, enough is enough!!  We don’t have military coups, because we have written into our laws that the military is subordinate to civilian control.  We have orderly processes to insure the continuity of our way of life.  And we know that we have our ability to change our own destiny.

These are the reasons we love the United States of America.  Even in our darkest hours, we have stood together, shoulder to shoulder, for liberty, for freedom, for the rights we were born to have.  Nowhere else in the world can you have such a diversity of people, coming together to form a more perfect union.

“In France, your family can have lived there for 200 years, and you will still be considered a foreigner. In Germany, someone can emigrate from Asia 400 years before, and not be considered German.  In Saudi  Arabia, someone can trace their family back 300 years, but they will not be considered Saudi…Yet, In the United States of America, someone can emigrate to the US, get their green card, then get Naturalized, and will forever more be known as American.”

That is why this is the greatest country, with the greatest citizens, on this planet.

“We Must All Stand Together, Or Assuredly, We Shall All Swing Separate…”