What America is Really About
I had a revelation and it finally just dawned on me about what America is really about. More specifically, what the term land of opportunity really means. It really is far simpler and less giving than most would think it to mean.
The land of opportunity doesn’t mean that you have the right to be rich. It doesn’t mean you have the right to be famous or heard. It also doesn’t mean you have the right to lead and have your opinion heard. It doesn’t mean you have completely religious freedom or that you can go about doing whatever you want.
What it means is that you have the opportunity to try or have the possibility of doing those things. It means you will have to work hard and struggle to achieve what you want but that you will not be denied the right to try in some form. It is the freedom of being able to think what you want to think without the threat of being executed but it also means that you will have to fight for it.
It is like a blank piece of paper and everyone has a marker. It isn’t an unlimited resource of opportunity but it means that it is there at that point in time. You can have a chance to find a place to draw what you want. A place where you can be a peaceful farmer or a fearsome town guard, or policeman for more modern understanding. It is a place that will give you the chance to be you and not what some super being or power wants you to be.
There is a but to it all though. It is also a place where other have the opportunity to stop you. Where they have their chance to reach power status and oppress everyone else. It is a place where people can be robbers and pirates. It is a place where people can build empires. It is a place of both good and bad opportunities.
Then America became bigger and fuller. The pictures being filled in and there is less room to grow. Then it became more solid and then it was a nation. The founding fathers and mothers broke off of the empire which controlled them to begin with. Then they realized that with all this opportunity came risk to many. They decided rules had to be laid down to keep the opportunity safe from corruption and capture by others.
Thus the constitution was laid down to give people rights and to regulate the power so that people could still be free but under control, a free nation. The key word in that term is not free it is “nation”. Nation means a body of controlling power consisting of people on a territory. This means that there is controllers and freedom in the same place.
This is not a written in stone thing though. Just because something is doesn’t mean it deserves the right to be or deserves to be for that matter. It can be destroyed in the same opportunity that gave its rise. It is not the constitutions job to protect the people, it is the peoples job to protect the constitution. The constitution doesn’t give a person freedom it tells others that you have that freedom and what your freedoms are. It is up to the individual to defend this so that it may be.
In short the whole world has opportunity but what America was, was a blank slate that people could build fresh on. A more open opportunity if you will, that gave people a chance to do what they wanted and live how they saw fit without a over oppressing power reigning over their heads telling them what to think, do, eat, and ultimately how to live their lives. America was a new start kind of opportunities and when one opportunity is used up a new one is born which can ether improve or destroy the previous achievement. The world is full of opportunities not all of those are positive though.
