What is possible?

What is possible?

Imagine its 1619 and you’re standing somewhere outside what would one day become Washington D.C. It’s a gorgeous day, a perfect 68 degrees with a crisp autumn breeze. You look up and see a plane flying above. Not possible right? Well not to a person in 1619. The you in 1619 probably couldn’t have imagined the revolutionary war or the abolishment of slavery either. Now look around at your 2022 world, see anything you’d like to fix? Do you think it’s possible? I do.

So how did the you standing in 1619 get here in 2022? How did America rise?

Your past self in 1619 understood the value of balance between the rights of the individual and the group. What that individual and group represent has shifted over the years, for example, the 1619 you might think of the group as your immediate community. The 1765 you probably thought of the group as your colony or state. By 1776, you might have started thinking of the group as America. This is where the impossible became possible. By the time the 1790 you opened your eyes for the first time the collected strength of our nation was pulled together, and you were no longer a Virginian first you were an American first.

Yes, the you in this story is white. I cannot change the past, but I can acknowledge it. Maybe the you now is white or maybe not, I know that both the you now and the past you are American and that’s all that matters for this story.

For America to gain its independence, it took great men shaping the minds of 13 individual colonies to join the group of the Union. Leaders like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and many others. These men led to seek compromise and show each individual that working together as a group against a common enemy, we can turn the impossible into possible.

Fast forward to the you now. You can be white or black, Asian or Hispanic, man or woman, you can be anything as long as you are an American first. Who are our enemies? And how do we defeat them? Well two of our enemies are foreign and two are domestic. China and Russia pose significant threat to our freedom, but our biggest threat comes from within. In George Washingtons Farewell Speech he said

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

And George was right. Our other two enemies are the Democratic and Republican parties. Now I want to elaborate on what I mean by enemy in this arena. We do not fight this enemy like we fight a foreign enemy. We fight this enemy with love, understanding, and most importantly, knowledge and reason. But make no mistake, the Parties have become completely corrupted by radicals on both sides and needs to be addressed by new leadership in our nation. Radicals taking over the parties is not new in our nation; it’s happened several times in the past. In each of those occasions a new moderate party was born to defeat the radical party. When a group ceases to protect the rights of that group, instead focusing on the ambitions of men organizing the group, it becomes the responsibility of the individual to form a new group. The Republican party (commonly known as the Democratic-Republican Party) of the 1790s did just that and was formed to combat the ambitions of Hamilton and the Federalist party. In the 1860s the new Republican party was formed to defeat the radicals driving us to civil war. They didn’t stop the war, but they were able to win it along with abolishing slavery. They made the impossible possible because reasoned of leadership from Abraham Lincoln, Fredrick Douglass, William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Ulysses S. Grant.

They led the individual to support the group and that group was once again the Union. We are all Americans, and we are strong individuals, but our individual freedom cannot exist without the group of America and therefore before we can be an individual, we must be an American First.

So now that we have identified the “enemies” lets discuss what the current you needs to do to defeat them. You start by thinking of yourself as an American first, the next thing you need to do is look for our Washington, Adams, Lincoln, and Douglass. We need reasoned leadership in a time of radicals, and we need them to join together and form a new group for us to be part of. And if you happen to be part of the Democratic Party or Republican party and you think of yourself as a reasonable person, then you should leave and help form the new group.

What makes America the greatest country in the world is its people and what has kept America on top so long is its reasoned leadership guiding its people. The people of America are still great, but we have a crisis of leadership. So, ask yourself, are you a leader? Not sure? What if your freedom were at stake?

I will acknowledge the problem is serious and that could scare a lot of people, but you should not be alarmed because we’ve done this before. We turned the power of the individual into the power of the group and freed ourselves from Britain, abolished slavery, defeated evil in Europe while securing our freedom for future generations. Americans are not afraid of a challenge. Our next challenge is here, and it is time for a new generation to rise.

It’s time to r3think, go Forward and put America First. Nothing is impossible.