I often hear people ask veterans why they chose to serve their country, especially during a time of war when they know the risks, the deployments away from family, and the toll it takes, sometimes even long after they return home. The answers I hear are usually somewhat consistent: a desire to be part of the greater good, money for college, family business, kill some terrorists, get a security clearance, and so on.
For me, it was personal. I joined the Army after 9/11 because of how much I loved America and everything she stood for.
I come from a fourth-generation military family, so I learned early on why America is worth defending and how our nation is different: While we’ve always had our ups and downs, we are still the greatest country on Earth. I wanted to ensure that all the wars that have been fought to preserve those freedoms and protect our citizens never reach our border again.
In 2020, however, it isn’t Russia, al-Qaida, ISIS, or other foreign adversaries threatening our freedom. It is the rise of divisiveness and extremism from leftist leadership within our own country.
Leftist Takeover Has Been a Long Time Coming
This wasn’t instantaneous; we were distracted. We spent decades and trillions of dollars focused on external “threats” that we have nothing to show for. We ignored systemic domestic issues and rising radical leftist views by telling ourselves that if we continually focus our efforts on the enemy in the mountains of Afghanistan or the deserts of Africa, we can keep American strong and safe. Yet it is more likely for a police officer to be killed in the line of duty on the streets of an American city in 2020 than it is for an American soldier to be killed in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Our kids are being left behind academically. America’s youths significantly lag the rest of the developed world, especially in math, science, and reading, and leftist indoctrination in our public schools has become mainstream.
Social issues have replaced economics and history in order of importance, and safe spaces and speech suppression dominate. Seventy percent of millennials say they would vote for a socialist, mostly because they think it’s better for equality. The director of the 1619 Project, who won a Pulitzer Prize, literally rewrote history, starting with the founding of our nation. Schools fully approved the project and use it in history curricula.
Corporate media helped push leftist propaganda by refusing to call violent riots across our county for what they are. Instead, media elites called them “protests” as people were setting cars on fire, looting merchandise, and violently attacking people defending their properties and businesses. Mayors and governors were quick to blame President Trump while it was their policies and inept leadership that enabled the lawlessness. Partisan prosecutors even charged people with crimes for merely defending themselves from angry mobs.
Big Tech is even worse. Social media censorship, despite outrage from the right, has had zero consequences for its overly biased agenda and stifling of free speech against conservatives. These tech giants were even bold enough to essentially interfere with the election by controlling and limiting what information the public can access and punishing those who attempt to share the “banned” content. Congress continues to hold hearings with tech leaders that accomplish nothing.
This Veterans Day, We’re Learning the Hard Way
I’ve recently heard people say, “There is more that unites us than divides us,” but what might that be? Perhaps our humanity? For the past four years, the left has dehumanized Trump supporters, vandalizing their businesses, breaking into their cars, and stealing their property.
The “tolerant left” spouted the rhetoric that Trump supporters are racists, bigots, white supremacists, sexists, xenophobes, and more. They harassed and spit in the faces of people who refused to bow down to Black Lives Matter, beat up people in Trump gear, and demonized those who expressed freedom of thought outside the leftist-approved talking points. Businesses that had boarded up their storefronts in anticipation of violent riots after the election stopped worrying once the media called the race for Biden, realizing it wasn’t conservative Trump supporters that were taking to the streets to incite as much destruction as possible.
So why am I disappointed in Americans this Veterans Day? Because despite the record-setting 33 percent GDP growth last quarter, the economic growth opportunities over the last four years and unexpected recovery from the most devastating global pandemic in 100 years, unprecedented peace in the Middle East, and preventing war with North Korea, still half of the population wants a fundamentally different America than the one veterans have fought and died to preserve for more than 200 years.
Freedom doesn’t look like a national mask mandate, government-decided health care, and “systemic racism” rhetoric that enables the kind of lawlessness that has ravaged so many American cities, among so many other modern-day Democratic policies that undermine American exceptionalism.
Real truth no longer matters — only the truth the left wants to believe. That way they can excuse violence, smears, and intolerance when it fits their purposes. Leftists are effectively doing the job of our adversaries for them.
For this veteran, it’s incredibly disappointing to see our nation having to learn the hard way. Unfortunately, most don’t realize that the only way to preserve freedom is to fight for it before it is taken. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t put it back.