by Eli Chisholm

Created on: September 13, 2008

I was born a military brat in the cold that signals the start of the Alaskan winter in Anchorage. Being born here, and knowing nothing else but the luxuries of freedom, liberty, and stated opinion, some might denigrate me for taking what I have for granted, as so many of my countrymen do. And, in different circumstances, with different upbringing, that might have been the case. However, being born into a military family, and growing up in the most fiercely independent state in the Union, such is not the case. I learned about the heritage our founders gave us, fleeing at first from religious persecution at the hands of the Anglican church in England, and later coming by choice, for the promise of new wealth, new freedom, and a new life; first forcibly, and later in life as an exercise in pride. I learned of the tremendous obstacles thrown at the promise of liberty in America, and how some few men with noble convictions and the will to act led a group of disparate colonies to defeat the greatest power in the known world at that time, to be allowed to live based on the principle, '...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'

Breathtaking.

It was, and still is, a bold endeavor: that we as people are beholden to ourselves and our Creator first, whomever we might decide to believe that is, and that the government is beholden to US; this was nothing like the numerous lands that our forefathers came from. Our ancestry, all of us in America, came with the promise of better things, freedom to act and live as they see fit, and to be free from persecution. Our forerunners, coming from many places, had no common bonds of lineage, or rank, or religion, or custom, but were instead held together by the common bond of wanting better for them and their families, and were proud to throw off their old heritages and be named among the brave peoples proud to call themselves Americans. Our principles of measuring a man were not based on breeding, but on action, thinking that any man or woman can do well if they only want it and try to. The Statue of Liberty, our own Mother of Exiles, brazenly states it to the world with her inscription, '"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed

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