A Word about Patriotism

November 4, 2008 should be a day remembered by all Americans as a great and significant day. This day returned hope to many Americans who, for whatever reason or length of time, thought none was to be found. The day after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States a woman expressed to me that she sang the national anthem outside the White House the previous night and that it was the first time that she had sung that song in many years. She sang it because of her deep sense of emotion while witnessing the first African-American elected president. Regardless of the color of your skin, the political party with which you have registered, or from which religious background you come the election of a man of color to the office of President of the United States is very meaningful. This is America, a place where you are judged “by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here you can build a home. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me” (quoted from the movie Gettysburg).

November 4, 2008 reminds us again of the values and principles upon which this great and amazing Republic was founded. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It is this government wherein we live that such events take place. The founding documents that have been preserved and which preserve our nation need to be protected and supported in all times and in all places and at all cost. To me this is patriotism. Men and women will rise and fall, parties will come and go, and times of peace and war will be interrupted but the founding principles and truths that are contained in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States can not and will not be lost if we as a people will ever bear them up and ensure their protection. It is because of these documents that all of us should be standing in front of our own houses singing the national anthem.

In the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held just last month in Salt Lake City, Utah President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of 12 Apostles, spoke about patriotism. If you would like to read his words, which I would encourage you to do, please follow this link. http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-947-27,00.html. The members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have not always been liked by their fellow citizens. In fact, the members of the LDS church had to leave the United States in the 1840’s in order to find refuge, peace and a place where they wouldn’t be destroyed for their beliefs. They traveled hundreds of miles by wagon and handcart to settle in a desert wasteland now called Utah, a place that no one else wanted.

Two years after they entered Utah and begun to make the area thrive the Saints had a celebration and they chose patriotism as the theme. President Packer makes comments on why choosing this theme was so important and why it was so amazing for the Saints at that time. I won’t mention them all, you can read them for yourself, but I would like to point out that on this day of celebration there was a parade and at the front of the parade walked 24 men wearing crowns with swords at their waist all holding copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The Declaration of Independence was read at the celebration. A man named Phineas Richards, who was over the age of 60, stood and spoke these words at the celebration, quoting President Packer, “He spoke of the need for them to teach patriotism to their children and to love and honor freedom. After he briefly recited the perils that they had come through, he said: ‘Brethren and friends, we who have lived to three-score years, have beheld the government of the United States in its glory, and know that the outrageous cruelties we have suffered proceeded from a corrupted and degenerate administration, while the pure principles of our boasted Constitution remain unchanged. As we have inherited the spirit of liberty and the fire of patriotism from our fathers, so let them descend [unchanged] to our posterity.’”

This should be the sounding call to all of us today. It is our obligation to make sure that the principles of freedom and liberty are ours today and tomorrow no matter what our circumstance. If we want the United States to be great then we need to make sure that every citizen of this country is thought of and treated as being great. History was made on November 4, 2008 but that doesn’t mean that all of our problems have been solved. Barack Obama has persuaded us that he will help lead in the fight to protect the principles of the nation’s founding documents but he is only a man. It is in the principles and truths themselves that we should be trusting and placing our hope. It is because those documents are intact and preserved that Barack Obama has been elected president. It is because those documents are still honored that I am able to write this entry. What we need as a country is to stand by those principles that have brought us through the years to this historical point and not redefine new principles. What we need is to be true patriots to the cause “and for the support of this Declaration [of Independence], with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”