The Battle for America rages on; on every street corner, every local pub and every battle field in the Middle East, the battle for the hearts and minds of America and Americans continues. This is a battle that started well before the current administration and it is directed not at the hearts and minds of those around the world but at us, the average Americans from every walk of life, every religious or non-religious persuasion and regardless of what you nation of birth was or the color of your skin, the battle wages on.

 

What is at stake is the very character of America, the view we American hold of our own home country. Hated of loved around the world it makes little difference here in the home land, where it is our view of America not those of foreigners that steer this country in whatever direction we the people want it to go in.

 

Under two different Presidents in the last half of the twentieth century America held itself in the highest of self esteem collectively. Those two Presidents were of course Kennedy and Reagan. Both these great leaders of different parties had one thing more deeply engrained into their personalities as national leaders than any other, the inherent goodness of America and of her people. When Kennedy asked what you could do for your country you felt a sense of community with your fellow Americans and wanted what was best for all in the course of creating that which was best for yourself, and when Reagan spoke of the Golden City on the hill you could see America and all her greatness basking in the glow of her power, her promise and her history.

 

With the current debates going on at this site I thought it would be nice to bring them all into one cohesive idea drawing from all the subjects currently up for debate. In my mine it really comes down to who holds the peoples ideals at the moment. I say at the moment because our ideals change over time about what role America should play in both our own life and on the world stage. We were once a nation that worked hard at staying out of everyone’s business, while today we are sometimes thrust upon the world as savior in some cases, scourge in yet others. But it is the idea that what we are doing is right and just that has always been at the forefront of our collective mindset. We went to war with Germany and Japan for the right reasons it is said, yet in Vietnam and Iraq for the wrong reasons.

 

Yet the case can be made that all were right when you look at the numbers of people we liberated worldwide and the case can be made that all were wrong considering the toll it took on us here at home. But the determining factor in those we agree with was again that they were just causes, where the later are considered not to be. It is our idea that America is good vs. bad that makes us think the way we do about these conflicts.

 

To put it plainly, we tend to think that when the person in office is there at the will of the people in an overwhelming way, Kennedy’s win was less than a land slide, but Reagan’s re-election was a 49 state slaughter, then we tend to believe in the message and the messenger. Clinton was not viewed by the country as a whole as a good leader, nor is Bush, nor was Carter, LBJ or Nixon, but something about the other two was so incredibly righteous that we let slide the minor and sometimes major character flaws that these two men, like the others in their select group had.

 

Yet the battle rages on, but today there is not one member of either the Republican Party of the Democrat Party that can single handedly draw a majority of the people into his or her dream for our mighty, just and promising America. But I assure you all, he or she is out there, and though we may not know the name yet, the dream will be told and the vision recognized, and the American people will again view themselves as being in a just land, with a clear vision of it’s place in the this world and in our individual lives.

 

America’s greatness is not within any party or political idea, it is within the people themselves, and we need only a leader to remind us that we put men on the moon, grew the mightiest military in the history of the world, and above all, liberated more people on this planet than any country in history, and all this we did in just a little under 200 years. Yes, as we are now only a bit more than a quarter ways into our third century we long for that guiding light; when will it come, who will holds it torch and light our way to greatness once again?

 

I offer no name at the moment, but like Reagan, Kennedy, Lincoln and Washington, Roosevelt and Jefferson, there are great men and women waiting for their moment, some not born yet, some on the stage today just waiting for that event that will thrust them into the public eye.

 

But what would I know; I’m just an Average American, waiting and hoping for the right name to appear, the right person to come forth and identify himself by his actions and deeds, not his words and promises.