The Land Of The Free

Please recite The Pledge of Allegiance. I’m sure most people who grew up in America would be able to recite The Pledge without much thought. Being American is awesome. A couple things come to mind when I think of my beloved country.  Cheeseburgers, baseball, bald eagles, apple pie, McDonalds, and above all else: football.  These are just few of the many things that represent the greatest country in the world.  Of those items, almost all of them I see on a regular basis just by watching TV.  However, when growing up, I was always told America is the “land of the free and home of the brave”.  Freedom isn’t something I can see, or even something I hear about that often, yet we are told it is the backbone of our country.  When people live in America they often take for granted the many things that make America a unique and fortunate country to grow up in.

As a child growing up in America I learned to love my nation.  In school history classes I have learned endless facts about Americas founding, colonization, becoming a nation, and finally our rise to a world superpower.  I especially remember learning about our great constitution and the freedoms it guarantees its peoples in our constitutional democracy.  Further, I heard all about the many people who immigrated to America because of the economic opportunities it presented. I learned all about the many victories of American armies during the world wars, the cold war, and how we always fought to protect capitalism and democracy from communism.  Although these facts were presented in a very biased manner, I inevitably grew up with a profound appreciation for America and the principles on which it was founded.

As I grew older, I learned less and less about how America represents freedom and opportunity, and more about the shortcomings of America.  Perhaps this is a result of the great financial recession that plagued most of my high school years when I started paying attention to the news and how these problems impact millions of Americans.  Not only was there a terrible financial crisis, but we were also fighting a seemingly never-ending war on terrorism.  With these facts always in the news, I began to think of America less as a land of opportunity and freedom, and more as a land of problems.  The list of ‘problems’ America faces are never ending, and range from our political system, to our health care, to even our great federal deficit.  While Americans are constantly reminded about our problems, those from other countries still see America for its beauty.

People from other nations view America in a much different light than most Americans do.  When I was visiting Peru over winter break I asked my tour guide, Javier, what most Peruvians thought of Americans.  I was expecting him to say Americans are annoying tourists obsessed with materialism.  Rather he said that almost every Peruvian has a dream to one day make it to the United States.  Further, he said that just about every family, including his, has somebody who is in America working.  When I asked why, he said simply that, “America is the land of opportunity”. This was especially surprising to me because it gave a new found appreciation to all the beauties I grew up hearing about America that I took for granted.  Javier greatly admired the vast opportunity in America, the freedom, and the democracy.  We hear all the time about the great economic recession that is still plaguing many Americans with unemployment.  However, in Peru the unemployment in some cities is significantly higher (40%).  Further, the jobs many Americans think of as dead-end jobs, many Peruvians look up to as a great opportunity.  Essentially, while I was growing up I was simply told about freedom and opportunity, but I never had actually realized that other people grew up without the great opportunity I enjoyed on an every-day basis.

I think a major reason for this discrepancy comes from our media.  So often yellow journalism tactics cause media to pay attention to the stories that sell the most, and unfortunately this is mostly the bad parts of America.  When constantly hearing about American problems it is hard to think of all the many benefits living in America has that we take for granted.  When is the last time you heard a news anchor say, “In today’s news, Americans still enjoy the freedom to vote for whoever they want, be safe from foreign nations, and enjoy the right to fair trials and is still backed by a strong constitution”.  The fact of the matter is, when growing up you hear all about the beauties that make America a great country.  However, as we grow older and start to pay more attention to the media, we constantly hear of the problems plaguing America.  This causes people to forget how great of a nation we live in, and the many intangibles we enjoy that other people do not experience.