YouCantMissThis.com- By Bones Rodriguez

This is NOT a country...

Yesterday I was watching the 2-hour "Extreme Makeover- Home Edition", and it was for a marine who saved some people on September 11th. He loved being a Marine, and it showed all over; he was a nice, honorable, family guy. He happened to mention that he would "die for this country", and it got me thinking:

We don't live in a country.

We live in an IDEA.

This isn't a country like England, France, or China- The U.S. is an IDEA that has boundaries.

The IDEA is that the INDIVIDUAL has worth; In China, the philosophy is that the individual is there to serve the government, and whatever is good for the government is good for the individual.

Our IDEA is the opposite; Our idea is that the government is here to serve the individual. Our IDEA is that the individual can do what he or she wants, whenever they want, and with whom. We protect personal property, we spend millions to save one life, and we assume innocence before guilt.

Our IDEA supports that humanity is GOOD.

The IDEA supports that ALL of humanity is good.

I think there are many of us who are forgetting the IDEA, and who are moving more and more towards a "commonwealth" philosophy, and it made me think of this quote:

"People who say 'you should do for others' are mostly planning on being an 'other'"

And our IDEA is OPPOSITE of that.

We don't always live up to the IDEA of the U.S., but we're trying, and YES-
I think that's an IDEA worth dying for.