My Country, Mine

It’s not fair to add conditions. That’s not true love. And patriotism is a kind of love. It means standing up for something when you see it falling. It means coming to the rescue when it’s getting lost. Let’s be honest, this country is changing, has been changing. And sometimes that scares me.

It frightens me that laws need to be made about how I get to take care of myself, protect my family, educate my children. I get uncomfortable when government starts meddling in the most personal areas of my life, my thinking. Yet, I still love my country.

Without patriotism, we will lose the little we have left. There will be no one left to fight for our freedom, our democracy, our way of life. Patriotism isn’t about falling in and then out of love every time power changes, every time “they” do something of which we don’t approve. Patriotism is standing by your country through faults and failures because it’s worth fighting for what you love.