Yesteryear

I remember the America I was raised to believe in.

It was so much simpler in those days. That America was one in which you never heard about the police shooting a defenseless man because the color of his skin. That was an America where it was still safe to go to the movies or school, and you never knew that words that were stamped across the back of that crisp new dollar bill were evil and egregious.

I remember that fateful day in April of 1999 when the world got a little bit darker and just going to school got a little bit scarier. I remember the tall, gaunt shapes all garbed in black, and looks on the faces of the ones covered in blood, running from the floodlit halls that were so much like the ones that I found myself in every day.

Fast forward two years later, and that day that none of us will ever forget. That was the day when everything changed, that was the day that the hearts and minds of America turned to ice, and the ideals that our founding fathers fought for disappeared from the shores of our freedom-soaked land forever.

America no longer looks anything like the one that I grew up to believe in. This once great nation that we call home no longer holds any semblance of the one that parades gloriously through the halls of history and glory.

The America that we know now is one of ignorance, fear and animosity. It is ruled by an elite few that care little for those that they govern, and it is inhabited by the scared, ignorant and apathetic, who have no knowledge of true democracy or freedom.

I spent years studying the works of our Founding Fathers. I cannot count the nights spent pouring over the "holy" scriptures of those men who would have sacrificed all to throw away the yokes of political and religious tyranny. The America that they hoped to form was one of absolute peace, prosperity, religious tolerance and freedom. Even just a short browse through the works of incredible men like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Jay quickly shows you that the world that they sought to create was an incredible one - one that looks nothing like the America that we see today.

Today, the America that we find is one of absolute religious intolerance, as well as intolerance and discrimination of every other kind - sexual intolerance, racial intolerance and discrimination, gender intolerance and discrimination; the list goes on and on.

We have lost sight of what our Founding Fathers most hoped for: a world where each man was the master of his own life, and cared little for the inner workings of the lives of his neighbors. A quick read through the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers or even the inspirational works of Thomas Paine quickly paints the picture of the America we were meant to be.

We have allowed an elite few to skew that vision for us. Instead of electing members of our society - the men and women that live and work along side us and amongst us - we elect the well-connected and well endowed criminals, that are as detached from normal life in America as a Martian would be.

We no longer look to elect men and women who emody the ideals of our Founding Fathers, wise and stoic men, with free hearts and even freer minds; great men who sought to create a Utopia where all men would be free to follow the pursuits of their greatest passions and hopes.

We now live in fear and animosity. We judge instantly based on the color of skin, rather than the "content of character". We allow violence and intolerance to operate as the norm across our country, and turn an eye to the violence that would have raised the country into arms for change only a decade past.

It is time for us to come together, to remember our history, and to stop the track of destruction that we are most certainly on. We must remember our true heritage, the dreams of our Founding Fathers, not the tiny slights and differences between our churches and our cultures.

America is only great when it is united. What can we hope to achieve when our streets are rife with violence and corruption, when our children are just as likely to be killed in a school attack as a car wreck? What kind of greatness or pride can we ever hope to hold when we live in a country where men and women are killed just based on the arbitrary basis of the color of their skin or who sleeps next to them in bed? How can we hold our heads up high when we murder those who do not believe in the same creator as our neighbors and our friends?

If we ever hope to be that America that great men like Thomas Jefferson sought to create, we must reform. We must elect men and women who truly represent the people. We must put people in power that have a purity of heart and a strength of character. We must fight to pull down the fear and tyranny that has been sown into the very fiber of our culture. We must fight to reclaim the America of so many decades ago.