Ten years ago at this exact time I was standing in my pajamas in my living room with tears streaming down my face, my hair a wreck. I was a 21-year-old newlywed and mother. My months-old infant sat in a bouncy seat, fascinated by his fists. My sobs startled him; he jolted in his seat, looked for my face, smiled and cooed, which made me cry harder.

The dichotomy of such innocence in my living room and the terror and evil unfolding on my television broke me in ways that I will never be able to explain. I wept for every single person as though they were cherished members of my own family. I wanted to reach through the television to make it stop, to catch the people jumping and falling with my hands.

As the second tower fell, the realization of what our country faced and what we would have to do as a nation hit me.

I had identified myself as a liberal my entire life, until this day. I had an early midlife crisis when I was around 19 years-old, when I began to think that I didn’t actually believe in the principles with which I was raised. I was raised by a very big southern Democrat union family. I was indoctrinated by years of pop-culture, educational bias, and family mantra. It was the only way. I did not vote for George W. Bush. I supported Gore. Even as I began to shed the beliefs of a Democrat, one thing remained: I still felt that America had a problem with the “military complex.” The only reason people were hostile to us, I surmised, was because they were intimidated by our military. I thought Bush was representative of this and it was the reason I didn’t support him.

That belief was blown to hell on 9/11.

“Thank God George Bush is president,” I blurted out in the middle of a furious sob. My husband, who was born wearing a Reagan shirt, looked at me with wide-eyed wonderment.

How foolish I had been.

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The Fourth of July weekend is a time when we Americans expect our 1400 newspapers to take a reprieve from their endless ridicules and criticisms to dutifully celebrate all that is good in our nation. We look forward those beautiful front page pictures and stories about patriotic parades down Main Street and glorious fireworks displays. We appreciates the Op Ed letters that express heart-felt thankfulness for the sacrifice of our troops serving in harm’s way; uplifting stories of the values that unite us as a beacon for freedom, and tales of rugged individualism that define our spirit. But there will always be one tabloid that will stand alone in failing to appreciate the true meaning of Fourth of July; the New York Times.

When the Times refers to itself as: “All the News That’s Fit to Print”; the paper expects all the unwashed proletariat must show subdued homage to the superior intellect. For this July Fourth weekend, they have achieved a new pinnacle of negativism and defeat. In contrast to joyous patriotic faire; the Times offers a despondent middle-aged woman bowing to a symbolically torn American flag forlornly fluttering in the total desolation of tornado-ravaged Joplin, Missouri.

Having established a morose mood; the Times stifles our spirit with Front Page headlines; American Folly”, “Declaration of Endurance, and “Fears of Declining”. Having sufficiently documented America as a despairing empire; Times Op Eds indict our moral decay with: “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt”, “It Gets Even Worse”, and “Corporate Cash Con”.

“The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” introduces us to the “absurdity” of U.S. military veterans who often suffer pangs of “survivor guilt” for leaving their combat units when they return home from war. The writer analyzes “just how irrational those feelings are” with the help of 19th Century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche; who is most famous for his belief in existential nihilism that confirms life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value; consequently God is Dead. Nietzsche describes such military self-doubt as due to a “bad conscience” for what “I ought not to have done.” Having thoroughly defamed our military; the Times offers no fair and balanced opposing writer to extol the virtues of our sons and daughters who risk the ultimate sacrifice to answer to the high moral callings of honor, duty, and valor.

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“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he will fight, nothing that is more important than his own personal safety is a more miserable creature and has no chance of ever being free unless by the efforts of greater men then himself. “

-John Stuart Mill

I read this quote in the past couple days and it struck me square in the face. The ideology of modern western thought was forged on the American continent from the effort and struggle to survive that imbued us with a fierce sense of independent thought and rugged individualism culminating with the DECLARATION of INDEPENDENCE and the birth of a nation. This is what the Declaration of Independence was talking about in the first paragraphs. All people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. It is so obvious the writers of this document had deep values precious to them and worth capturing on paper.

At this point in history, monarchies monopolized governments in countries around the world. And our colonies were ruled by leadership more than 3,000 miles away …. But everyone has their limit, right?

The early Americans had been taxed and humiliated by unjust laws and ignorant leadership. Colonial Americans knew what was being done to them was wrong and they felt ANYTHING was better than what was happening to them. So, they chose to stand for a simple notion: Man is in control of his own destiny.

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