75-11-A1
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Is This The Land Of Our Fathers?
TranscriptToday I'd like to bring you a guest viewpoint about these United States. I think you'll find my daughter Maureen Reagan a provocative commentator. She'll be right with you. I was lucky enough to grow up when the American flag carried in a parade inspired a feeling of national pride. It brought a tear to the eye and an increase in your heartbeat. In a few short years I've seen that same flag ridiculed, violated, torn to shreds and burned. If the avalanche of discontent continues, if the idea that nationalism is somehow immoral grows, those wondrous, awesome, goose pimply feelings will have died an ignominious death. Why and how has ugly apathy spread in this country, a great country, a beautiful country, a nation trying desperately to live in peace and yet a nation and a people willing and able to defeat any foe, at any time, anywhere the freedom of human endeavor was threatened. When did America become fat and pompous, complacent and sniveling? When did America lose its youth and vitality and become crotchety and senile? Is it, as some say, time for a new American Dream? Is the old dream of individual accomplishment outmoded? Have we progressed so far the idea that we cannot be free while others live in chains no longer matters to Americans? Every generation has had to renew the battle to preserve freedom. Are we committed or are we intimidated by vociferous spoilers who would give away our inheritance rather than fight? Is America now a populist state where we envy those who have more while hating those who have less? Our origins are an overall freedom of opportunity, the opportunity to speak, to worship, to strive for and to achieve whatever our talents and ambitions allow. It's difficult to express the anxiety, the outright fear I feel for the future of this republic. The frustration of seeing such an immense problem without being able to present a solution. Does anybody want to listen or is the lack of simple answers an excuse for inactivity? Are we a nation founded on a belief in freedom for all people? Haven't our struggles, internal and external, been based on that concept? If not, then what we've been doing these last 199 years is history's biggest rip-off. A lack of political leadership has led the world to distrust our promises and a casual observer can only conclude that our grand experiment has been a selfish pursuit of material reward only for us and we've been buying off the rest of the world to allow it. For those of us who believe there is still a chance to salvage our principles and our pride. We may be scattered but we can raise our voices like stones from a sling against this Goliath of greed and hopelessness. Ask yourself what if David had never tried. This is Maureen Reagan. Thank you for listening. |
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