Constitution Day Celebration – 224 years of Freedom

[Sandra]

We want freedom and the all-encompassing perfect Constitution to protect it

Constitution Day Celebration – 224 years of Freedom

 Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh  Saturday, September 17, 2011
 
You are Americans by the grace of God. You were lucky to be born in the land of the free and the brave. Many foreigners risk their lives and fortunes to come here, while leaving behind everything they love and hold dear in order to be free. I am such a foreigner, I came from communist Romania in 1978.

I am a proud American by choice. Thirty-three years ago, my father gave up his only child when he signed the legal permission for my journey to America, knowing that he may never see me again. He understood very well that I wanted to be free and to develop my fullest potential without crushing government control. I wanted the opportunity to pursue my dreams, to break away from the poverty of the proletariat. We all knew that a better life and future waited in America if I only worked hard. I could not progress and maintain a conscience under the oppression of a communist dictatorship.

I have just returned two days ago from a visit to Romania. In the 25 years since my last visit, Romania has changed so much that it is now in some ways more capitalist and freer than we are. Twenty-five years ago, the boot of communism was still pressing heavily on the neck of the collective population. It was sad and depressing to watch the suffering, the political, economic, and religious persecution of my family and of citizens in general. I could not stand to witness it and I stopped visiting.

The communists were overthrown in December 1989 through a bloody revolution. They were overwhelmingly rejected from power but sadly not gone; they were still there in the shadows, re-emerging now like a malignant cancer. I visited their Social Democrat and European Socialist Party headquarters in my birth town. They are promising the same hollow, tired “hope and change” utopia.

The elderly, used to the nanny state, whose pensions were recently cut due to bureaucratic mismanagement, waste, and corruption are being told that their lives would be better under communism because they would be given a free loaf of bread, a dingy and dilapidated one-bedroom subsidized apartment, and an aspirin when disease struck. It was disheartening to watch how short people’s memory is. Young people entertain romanticized versions of socialism and communism. I have not forgotten the miserable life I lived under communism.

It was empowering to see my first cousin build a very successful manufacturing company through hard work and entrepreneurship. It took him 15 years of twelve-hour workdays but he succeeded because the new capitalist system that replaced the communist one removed initially all restrictions placed on political, religious, and economic freedoms of its citizens. For the first time in 1990, he was able to travel abroad and work, unencumbered by the existence of a relative in the “evil” capitalist U.S.

I still remember his rural meager one-room rental under communism with his wife and infant daughter. Their urban residence was being denied because social engineering under communism required that you lived where you were born, you were not allowed to move unless given permission by the Communist Party. They fought for years unsuccessfully to change their status from rural to urban. He had dreams and plans that were forbidden by the regime. He is now a benefactor to many churches that are being built not just in his area but also all over the country. By the last count, over 6,000 new churches were erected since the fall of communism.

I visited my father’s grave, and I promised him that he did not die in vain at the hands of communists. I promised that I will return more resolute to fight those who wish us harm, who want to fundamentally transform our society into the their utopian image of an egalitarian nation in which everybody is equally poor, equally miserable, equally beholden and dependent on an omnipotent nanny government who wants to control every aspect of our lives.

I am happy to return to the shining city on the hill with trepidation in my heart. I wanted to kiss the ground when we deplaned, save for the fact that it was shiny linoleum.

America is now my country and my home. America needs our help to save it and preserve it the way our founding fathers have intended 224 years ago when they drafted the perfect document, our Constitution.

The U.S. Constitution, handwritten by Jacob Shallus, was adopted on September 17, 1787. It is the second oldest written constitution still in use by any nation (after the 1600 statutes of San Marino). It has been amended 27 times, last time ratified on May 7, 1992. The first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights.

By comparison, the 2010 Romanian Constitution has 156 articles and has been modified at least a dozen times according to the type of governance in power, monarchy, socialist republic, communism, and republic.

Times are uncertain and scary. We must not remain silent; we must fight back the shredding of our Constitution and the trampling of our legal system, of our checks and balances. We must restore America to its greatness.

We must never be ashamed to be Americans. We are an exceptional nation and our exceptionalism comes from our ethical, moral, and religious values that founded this country. The pioneer spirit for good is still alive in every one of us.

Do not take freedoms for granted! Freedom is not free, millions of faceless Americans have died to preserve it so that I may speak to you today, so that I can return to my beloved adopted country and still have a voice in our collective future.

Millions of Americans have died and are still dying today to free other peoples from oppression. Our heroes are resting at Arlington National Cemetery, some in faraway countries, their courage and sacrifice never forgotten. They are in our hearts and prayers.

It means something to be an American who comes to the aid of so many, no questions asked, with food, medicine, disaster relief, re-building, and giving hope to so many. When Americans come to a part of the world, they are a beacon of salvation and of hope.

The beacon of hope is flickering. I wonder every day what freedoms have we lost while we were sleeping. If we keep silent, we resign to a fate of losing our Constitutional Republic to an ideology of phony “hope and change” that nobody understood initially, but it was now made abundantly clear. What kind of hope? What kind of change? Do we want change for the sake of change, change to buy more votes, more power, more influence? Do we want change that causes economic disasters and enslaves us? The answer is a resounding no. We want freedom and the all-encompassing perfect Constitution to protect it.

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