User:Chadlupkes/Red, White and Blue

From Left Space

I would like to speak about what being an American means to me. To do that, I would like to review the colors of our flag. Those colors are red, white and blue.

Red is the color of SACRIFICE. Shared sacrifice is how our country came to be. "We must all hang together or we will certainly hang separately." - Benjamin Franklin. We are all in this together, and we must never lose sight of that. Red is the color of blood on the battlefield, and it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from. Red is the color our eyes get when we honor our losses. We recognize that there will be sacrifices made to uphold our principles, and we are willing to share those sacrifices as a united country. Our fighting men and women come from every state, every race, every creed, every kind of background, and they deserve the best from us whether we are talking about the training that they go through, the equipment they have or the treatment and support they get when they come home. We support our military by giving them missions that they can be proud of, and by giving them all of the resources necessary to accomplish those missions. We also need the sacrifice of time, money, and energy offered by patriotic citizens every day of the year, whether we're at war or not. As JFK said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

White is the color of FAIRNESS. It is the color of the white paper ballots that we vote on. It is the color of the paper that our laws are written on. With the rainbow of diversity in ideas, races, religions, and other things that define our country, it is critically important to write our laws in black and white to be fair to everyone. This is where Civil Rights comes from. This is where our position on the LGBT community comes from. We understand that if laws are written or enforced to discriminate against any part of our society, the rest of that society is just as vulnerable. We pledge to be fair, and to push that idea of fairness to every aspect of our country, from fair treatment for mental health to fair trade deals in a fair market environment that lifts everyone up instead of giving anyone an advatage over anyone else.

Blue is the color of OPPORTUNITY. It is the color of the blue sky on the horizon that we all strive for, whether by wagon train in the 1800's to today's airline flights towards a new city of adventure. The blue field on the flag has 50 stars, and we recognize that in order to be able to reach for the stars, we need to be standing on a solid foundation. We need a fiscal policy that helps to build that foundation. We need our physical infrastructure of roads, power lines, water and sewer pipes and communications networks to be able to stand up to the challenges of our needs now and into the future. We are focused on building that foundation and making it strong underneath all of our feet so that everyone in our country has what they need to reach for the stars and reach for their potential. We are the enemy of anything that would damage that foundation. As Rev. Ian Paisley of Ireland said, "If the Foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

Written as a speech given at a Veterans Hospital while handing out a collection of phone cards.

Chad Lupkes, 2004