America is at a crossroads and only Americans can decide which road to take.  Everywhere we look our democracy is under attack…it is a time marked by lies undermining our election process, attacks on our White House, attacks on government, heated rhetoric, racially motivated killings, attacks on women’s rights, religious persecution of non-Christian worshipers, racially divisive rhetoric, a rise in white nationalism, a proliferation of guns and weak gun laws, Supreme Court abandonment of stare decisis, abandonment of ethics in our highest court, leanings toward autocracy, and the inability of Congress to truly address big issues like immigration, social security and inept processes that allow the debt ceiling to affect our credit rating and threaten shutdown of our government.

And perhaps, there is far too much silence from those truly good people on both sides.

These forces in some form or the other have reared their ugly heads before and Americans have fought them back.  This time they have come back more entrenched in government, stronger, more organized, bolder, craftier, and meaner.  But we the people are fighting and together I believe we will save our democracy. 

You see at the end of the day most Americans know what makes us different from other countries.  It is “we the people.”  In America, that is all of us, people of different races, different religions, different cultures, different histories, different beliefs, etc.…all of us.   Together we determine our fate and where we are going.  If our country doesn’t make it, it will be because we made huge mistakes along the way.  If our democracy doesn’t survive, it will be because we didn’t do what was necessary to ensure it’s survival.  Every person in this country has their part…but it is up to each individual person whether or not they participate.  There are consequences when we don’t participate…we are seeing some of those consequences today.

We can love America without loving everything about her.  I can love America and the progress she has made but not love the pace of change.  I can love America and not love her tax structure.  I can love America and not love the poverty and crime I am seeing.  Don’t tell me to go back to where I came from, because I am an American citizen and have contributed as much as anyone else I know.  Although I was born in this country to American citizens, I served in the military with people who were not, and I tell you they are as much Americans as I am.  I have seen naturalized citizens who were not born in America working in the poultry plants in the South and I tell you they are as much American as I am.  Remember, “We the people.”  So, if I complain about my America don’t think it’s any less precious to me…I just want her to be more perfect.  I want her to keep pressing forward.

Let me end with this excerpt from an earlier article:

“America has quite a few very wrong turns and more than a few bad politicians in its history, and this is certainly not the first time the bedrock of our Constitution has been under attack. Although progress may have been slowed and remnants of those battles remain even today, our democracy, our America survived.

I am hopeful because “us” is on the move. We are putting arguments on the table, feet on the ground, and will cast ballots at the polls just as our citizens have done time and time again.

One thing is for sure, whatever path we choose, U.S. citizens will have collectively chosen our own path because today we are a democracy.  Tomorrow is not promised but today we still have a vote that matters.”

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.