Message to America

"We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism."
Walter Cronkite, December 5, 1988

I love America. I love her unabashedly and unashamedly. And here's why:

I love the idea of a democratic nation that has an established history of welcoming immigrants from all parts of the world. Some reading this were born here. Others moved here for a better life. And the native ones – like the Navajo, the Apache, and the Comanche – have been here for well over one thousand years, long before any of us or our ancestors. Today, there are nearly 300 million of us that live here. Incredibly - despite our radically diverse racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds – we continue to evolve together as one of the greatest social and political experiments in the history of humanity and I love America for that.

I also love the freedoms that Americans are guaranteed by our Constitution and open society. Here, we may speak our minds freely and openly without fear of arrest. Here, both men and women are encouraged to have an education. Here, one can travel where and when one pleases. Here, men and women can have jobs and support a family. Here, everyone can freely and openly practice the religion of their choice without persecution. Here, we can be increasingly open about our sexual orientation without fear of being physically assaulted. Here, we can choose to not marry, we can choose not to have children and we can choose which types of food we won't eat. What we have isn't perfect, but we take it for granted: millions of humans around the globe do not have these same privileges. We are truly lucky for our freedoms and I love America for that.

But it is my ongoing love affair with the country herself, that fuels me most: the actual land on which we all stand. America has long stretches of pristine beaches on her coasts and towering mountain ranges covered with snow. America has vast deserts with sand dunes, desolate lake beds and active volcanic craters. America has old growth Sequoia and Redwood forests where some trees are so massive that you can hold hands with 15 of your friends and still not be able to encircle them. America has a river which is thousands of miles long, another which has carved a canyon over a mile deep into the rock and she has massive lakes left over from a previous ice age, when glaciers slowly and violently sliced through the land and left behind their tears. Most of us living in the larger cities forget just how beautiful this country truly is, but we are truly blessed to have so many natural wonders within our borders.

And yet, despite my deep fondness for America's diversity, freedoms and natural wonders, my love comes with a price – a sense of duty to protect this gift which we've all inherited and to help make it better. And to be better, America must continue to evolve. And because evolving requires rigorous honesty, my love for this country requires me to praise a job well done and to concede when America blunders.

To those misguided individuals who think it unpatriotic to admit that anything is ever wrong with America, her leaders or her policies, I say you've got it backwards: our nation's history repeatedly proves that confronting our mistakes and working to create a better society is about the most patriotic thing one can do for America. Ignoring mistakes or pretending they don't exist is childish, disrespectful of our great nation, and will eventually cause our downfall as a society.

We can't continue to make America better if we continue to think that everything's perfect the way it is. So when Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh & Anne Coulter become enraged at liberals, moderates or even conservatives who address valid problems with America, they do us all a great disservice: they encourage the silencing of dissent and, in doing so, delay or prevent necessary change and progress from occurring.Silencing dissent doesn't just kill the debate: in the end, it slowly kills democracy.

If we honor our own freedoms enough to use military power to give others similar autonomy, we must never lose site of our own most basic freedoms. So, the next time someone becomes enraged because there are those who do not support the war in Iraq, politely remind them of the truth: our soldiers fight to protect our Constitutional right tochallenge the fact that they need to fight at all.