Pam Dudding Contributing writer
Patriotism has a stronghold in many hearts of Americans.
The Craig Valley VFW Post 4491 often brings out those feelings whenever they host their annual writing contests.
Placing second in the Voice of Democracy contest this year was Kylee Clifton. When asked why she entered, she quickly answered, “I wanted to enter the contest because I want my voice to be heard.”
Her heartfelt words ring true for many Americans. This is her submission for the VOD contest with the theme, “America: Where Do We Go From Here?”
“America, land of the free and home of the brave. To understand where America is going from here, we will need to understand where America is currently and then take things from there.
The American people have lost sight of right and wrong. Assuming that all officers are bad, because a few are, is just lunacy. It’s always the few that ruin it for the many.
Putting down, and rioting against police officers, isn’t going to help anyone in the long run. At what point do the officers step aside? Leaving the American people unprotected. This is something we should think about.
Why are they getting put down? Because people don’t like how police handle situations – the way they are trained to deal with people. Not having enough training on how to deescalate a situation could kill someone.
The people’s response was to defund the police. When has defunding any type of program helped it get better? The Americans need to put more money into the police forces, to help make longer, more efficient training.
Erasing Americans’ own history, monuments, and statues also isn’t right. They are getting corrected for being too ‘racist’ or ‘offensive.’ Thomas Jefferson was one of our nation’s founding fathers as well as him being a main author of the Declaration of Independence.
These two things were very important in creating our nation. So many people today just want to throw out his good name. Because he owned slaves in a time when it was legal. You might as well just erase every man that had a hand in forming our nation. Because more likely than not, they had a slave or beat their wife, it was a different time. Americans need to stop erasing our historical monuments, and celebrate things aren’t like that anymore.
The American people are so divided today. Two people of different political views can barely agree to disagree. We need to realize we are all Americans. After all, Abraham Lincoln said, ‘A divided nation cannot stand.’”
VFW members are honored to encourage the younger generation to not only keep up with the current happenings, but to also be a “voice” for the nation.