Still Home of the Brave – Michael Cosper

A VISITOR FROM THE PAST
By ; Thelen Paulk

I had a dream the other night I didn't understand.
A figure walking through the mist with a flintlock in his hand His clothes were torn and dirty as he stood there by my bed.
He took off his three cornered hat and speaking low, he said:
"We fought a revolution to secure our liberty. We wrote the Constitution as a shield from tyranny. For future generations, this legacy we gave. In this, the land of the free and the home of the brave
You buy permits to travel and permits to own a gun. Permits to start a business or to build a place for one.
On land that you believe you own, you pay a yearly rent although you have no voice in ​

choosing ​how the money's spent.
Your children must attend a school that doesn't educate. Your Christian values can't be taught according to the state.
You read about the current news in a regulated press. You pay a tax you do not owe to please the foreign I.R.S.
Your money is no longer made of silver or of gold. You trade your wealth for paper, so your lives can be controlled.
You pay for crimes that make our Nation turn from God in shame. You've taken Satan's number as you've traded in your name.
You've given government control to those who do you harm so they can padlock churches and steal the family farm and keep
our country deep in debt, put men of God in jail, harass your fellow countrymen, while corrupted courts prevail.
Your public servants don't uphold the solemn oath they've sworn. They defy and rape the nation and leave its fabric tattered and torn.
Your leaders ship artillery arid guns to foreign shores and send your sons to slaughter fighting other people's wars
Can you regain the freedom for which we fought and died? Or don't you have the courage or the faith to stand with pride?
Are there no more values for which you'll fight to save? Or do you wish your children to live in fear as a slave?
People of the Republic arise and take a stand! Defend the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land!
Preserve our Great Republic and God Given Rights! And pray to God to keep the torch of Freedom burning bright!"
As I awoke he vanished in the mist from whence he came. His words were true. We are not Free. We have ourselves to blame.
For even now as tyrants trample each God Given Right, we only watch and tremble, too afraid to stand and fight.
If he stood by your bedside in a dream while you're asleep and wonders what remains of our Rights he fought so hard to keep.
What would be your answer if he called out from the grave?

IS THIS STILL THE LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE BRAVE?
 
 
For me the answer is yes, where I don’t agree with everything Thelen says, I do in principle agree with most of the poem and what I believe the message is. For a lot of us in a Constitution, three percent, or other patriotic group this poem rings very close to us. We, unlike some, relate more to that figure next to the bed who begs us to remember the sacrifice of our forefathers.
 
To remember why they fought for us and why they wrote the Constitution. It wasn’t just a set of rules or guidelines like the ones you see next to the pool at the Y, they are the foundation of what this Country is and why they fought so hard for it. They sacrificed and died to ensure a better life for us and future generations. They knew someday we would find ourselves in times like these, but if we simply turned to the Constitution and followed it’s rules the way they were written, we would be fine. If we held our government to the principals in the Constitution and remember that we are We the People, the words are there to guide us. The founding fathers also knew what would happen if we strayed from our virtues and morals.
A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin
 
We have aloud ourselves to stray from the very principals that made this Country so great, and why, because for just a minute we left our post. We let this Country slip ever so slightly from us. We stood silent for just one second too long, and now, we must double our efforts to return those virtues and morals back to this Country.
We must remind everyone that under the Constitution our forefathers believed that all men were equal in these three ways, 1. Equal before God. 2. Equal before the law. 3. Equal in their rights. Also, that the laws of the Constitution should once again be followed by not only us as citizens but by those we elect to uphold the Constitution.
 
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence of others, which cannot be where there is no law." - John Locke 
 
So, to answer the question of that man in the mist with his flintlock in hand, yes as long as there is men and women like us with air in our lungs and blood in our hearts,
Then this is still
The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave
​