Where America Lives

I saw something on the evening news that actually didn't make me want to throw an egg at Brian Williams' fake smile. People in Texas actually helping each other out. Not because they were running for office or fullfilling a community service sentence. They were helping each other out because they wanted to. Earlier in the week there were stories about people helping out neighbors who didn't have electricity by stretching extension cords across the street. That is when I'm reminded of what is actually right about this country. Patriotism has nothing to do with paying more taxes or expanding an already bloated and broken government. It has everything to do with actually building up the bedrock of America, which is the community. America doesn't live in the swamp that is Washington DC. It lives in Houston and Galveston and New Orleans and Scranton and San Diego and Juneau and the Bronx. It lives where people work for a living in a community and depend on each other and don't count their assets in voting blocks. America lives in the hearts of people of all races, creeds and colors who live here legally, pay their taxes and do their best to make a comfortable life. America lives in traffic jams and factories and grocery stores and malls and movie theaters. It lives in bus stops and schools and on beaches. America lives where we are. Where we are working and playing and living and struggling honestly. It lived, at one time, in the halls of government where patriots struggled, sometimes with each other, to unite a nation where before only enslaved colonies existed, but it doesn't live there now. It does live on blog sites and talk radio that keep a careful watch on the ivory towers of government that used to represent us. It lives in Wrigley Field, but not the Chicago Machine. It lives in sand-encrusted equipment that volunteer soldiers struggle to maintain in a desert country, just as it lives where people protest against the war. But it doesn't live in the hearts of politicians who think that losing the war would be good for their careers. It lives in classrooms where people argue about creationism versus evolution, but not in people who deny us the right to disagree. It even lives in liberal newscasts where sometimes, after all of the 'if it bleeds it leads' sensationalism and editorializing disguised as reporting, in the last moments of the newscast, almost as if by accident, we get to see a quick shot of real Americans helping each other.



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