America's Greatest Asset

America’s greatest asset, in my opinion, is the security that we feel in sharing our beliefs without repercussions from the government or other forces.

Though we may complain about the battles that we see between parties and branches, such as the President and Congress and the Supreme Court, this open discussion sets the example for the American people to know that they are also free to comment on acts by the government. With our self-criticizing government, efforts to shut down citizen-based criticism would seem absurd.

This asset is what gave Americans the opportunity to speak out against slavery, political machines, wars, monopolies, segregation, and immorality. It gives Americans the opportunity to speak in favor of service, religion, kindness, and other good things.

Perhaps the clearest defender of this asset is the inspired Constitution.

We owe some respect to the Constitution, even when circumstances tempt us to ignore it.

It is not by coincidence that the Constitution has protected us from tyranny for so many years. The Founding Fathers knew about tyranny through their experiences with England. Some may say that England didn’t really repress the colonies, and I might agree, but the relative freedom that colonists enjoyed increased their understanding even more. 

They remembered the time period when England had its last tyrant, James II (late 1600s), they knew what it was like to be almost completely free from the Crown’s influence (in the early 1700s), they knew what it felt like to have the government infringe on their daily lives (1760s and 1770s) and they knew what it was like to have a near-anarchic state under the weak Articles of Confederation (1780s). Thus as they wrote the Constitution, they had in mind a good balance of liberty and order. This led to the separated powers which prevents tyranny and the First Amendment which explicitly protects free speech.