America Resilient

New Lisbon, WI – “This too shall pass” could be an American motto. When the first settlers arrived they had to fight harsh weather, little food, and their own investors. In the first winter for the Pilgrims, nearly half died. But they did not stop fighting to build a new nation. Then there was a war with the natives, who vastly outnumbered the settlers. With their war whoops and their tomahawks they swept down on the villages won with such difficulty from the forest and killed many, but still those simple little farmers just got up on their feet, dusted themselves off, and kept on going.

Next they had to fight the mighty nation of Great Britain, because, you see, they were not yet their own country. And they had a lot of setbacks, even with George Washington leading them. They would lose almost entire armies at times as they tried to win their freedom, but they kept on fighting. No matter how many times they lost they forged on ahead, through Valley Forge, through Saratoga, through the betrayal of Benedict Arnold. They lost men and supplies, promises were broken, but they won.

 And when they won that war they did not stop there, because they knew that their work had only just begun. They had to draft a new constitution for their country, they had to set up a system of government, and they set up quite a system, unlike anything ever seen before. And after that they had to see to it that this new system was watched over. And they gave their new system to their children, and their children watched over it. And they had problems.

There was another war in 1812, and then a long series of battles on the high seas and argument in congress, while men fought over making their fellow humans free of slavery. But then talk turned to bloodshed. And we had a long and bloody civil war. In that war we came close to losing everything for which we had fought, but we held on, and afterwards we rebuilt. And we were stronger than ever before. Then not fifty years later we had a world war, and then a depression, but nobody talked about quitting, they had come too far to go back now. They just kept working as they had always worked.

And then another world war came, this time a war of terror, as men tried to conquer the world in a quest for global domination. And after it the cold war began, and at that time we could have been incinerated at any moment by nuclear explosions, but we survived our battle with Communism, and the Lenins and the Hitlers rolled over in their graves realizing that they could not keep America down. You would think that with so much evidence of that people would have given up trying, but they did not. Now there are terrorists, thinking that inspiring fear will get them what they want. One of the Boston Bombers recently said he does not understand Americans, and of course not, anyone who understands Americans understands they will never tolerate injustice, they fought a long civil rights campaign over that.

This is the greatest land that has ever been. Even though the government has overstepped its bounds, we can put it back inside them. Abuses of power, once known about, are not left unpunished, if they are, those that allow such things to happen will be punished by losing power. America has had a long and resilient history, it has had many problems and trials, but so has every country that has ever existed. Now is not the time, and ours is not the watch to let it all go to pieces.

America is still the greatest nation that has ever been. Let us not forget that while we repair from simply another attack on freedom. We must remember that attacks do not prove us weak, but our ability to resist them proves us strong.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott