When someone says the word hero to me, I automatically think of someone who gives his all to make right something that is wrong. The first person that enters my mind is Abraham Lincoln. In his "The House Divided" speech, President Lincoln said: "I believe this Government can not endure permanently half slave and half free". The speech starts out as follows: "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it". Wow! This speech would be just as valid today if he was discussing the current state of our union. If a candidate could just let us know where we are, what we are tending, and then let us know how he judges what we need to do and how to do it, we could certainly have a very clear idea of who we would vote for. President Lincoln was talking about the abolition of slavery. What we face today is not as heinous, but no less important to the continuation of the freedoms we enjoy here in this beautiful country we all call home.
Followed very closely behind President Lincoln, in my heroes book is Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King had a dream. His dream was that one day, his four children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. His dream, while a reality in many places, is still not 100 percent realized everywhere in this great country. "I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers." He ended this speech with the following: "When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" I believe, with all of my heart, that if Dr. King was alive today, he would include all religions, every race and creed in the world today, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, you name it.
I have a huge soft spot for the Kennedys as well. In his eulogy to Dr. King, Robert Kennedy said, " "What we need in the United States is not division, what we need in the United States is not hatred, what we need in the United States in not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black." I know in my heart that if this hero was still alive he would have included Asians, Turks, Iraqis, Latinos or any of the other nationalities that make up this wonderful melting pot we call America! What we need is not prejudice. What we need is tolerance and understanding of our differences.
John F. Kennedy had the entire country's hearts. In his inaugural address where he famously suggested that we "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country", he also said: "My Fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you. but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
What can we do together? It's my belief that if we truly worked together as brothers and sisters, that the sky would be the limit. If we could all put aside our differences in race, religion, national origins? Can you imagine? Can you imagine what the world would have been like without the untimely deaths of these heroes? Can you imagine? John Lennon could.... Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
Comments(21)