It’s been my privilege the past few months to work along with pastor Dr. Knox Herdon on his American Heritage Museum. The museum is nothing but a trailer that can be hauled from place to place to display the history of America from the Revolutionary War up until the War on Terror.
No matter what time period you might be looking at inside of that museum, you’ll note that every American fighting for this nation was fighting for “freedom.”
Freedom from the British in the 1700s on to freedom from terror today and you will note that there were many more running to America than running from America.
The French in the 19th century sculpted a statue that would stand in the New York City harbor and that statue would be known as the Statue of Liberty. Liberty that only America offered those that passed her torch and would come to expect from a government “by the people and for the people.”
During the War between the States the winning America brought freedom to a people that were considered nothing but possessions before that war.
During both World War I and World War II America fought to grant the people of Europe and Asia freedom.
I was once married to a woman whose parents ran on foot from their native home in Latvia across Europe to a port on the shores of France and on to England and eventually America during the last world war. They ran from the communists and they ran from Adolf Hitler and have never returned to Latvia since then.
If you, an American, go into their home today you will hear nothing but American spoken in the house, even though they are both Latvians. Their guest is American and it is not polite to speak in a language that the guest can’t understand.
I went to the Democratic Republic of South Vietnam in 1967 for one reason, which was because that nation wanted to enjoy the same rights, liberties and freedoms that I was privileged to take for granted here in America. The Republic of Vietnam asked America for help in getting those freedoms.
It was only after the American people demanded that the Vietnamese people fight their war that America withdrew from that nation. The American people spoke.
I know of a family right here in Fayetteville that fled Vietnam to come to America as the bullets flew past their ears on the roof of the American embassy in Saigon.
Today adults in oppressed nations of Central America send their children to that free nation to the north, America.
We the people of the United States need to stop tucking our tails between our legs and stand tall for who we are.
John Romph
Fayetteville, Ga.
