By: Wayne D. Leeper
A Land Called America

Just over 400 years ago, on April 27, 1607, three small ships arrived off the coast of the “New World.” Captain Edward Wingfield selected a small island about 40 miles up a river as the most defensible location for the new colony. The new colony was given the name of Jamestown. The three ships which had crossed an ocean to bring these first settlers were named the Constant, the Discovery and the Godspeed. These ships not only brought settlers to the new world, they also brought the name of God.

Fourteen years later, another ship arrived off the shores of America. Originally bound for Virginia, it was blown off course by a storm and landed instead off Cape Cod. It was named the Mayflower and carried 120 “pilgrims” to the New World. The ship arrived on November 21, 1620, but the passengers decided to remain on the ship through the winter. On March 21, 1621 the first pilgrims stepped ashore at Plymouth Rock.

What brought those people here? Why would they leave the security of Eng­land and the families they loved to sail 3,000 miles on small ships with noth­ing to eat for weeks except salt pork? Many did not survive the voyage, while others died soon after arriving. They arrived in a wilderness with little except a few tools and the clothes they were able to bring.

Some were very religious, while others were reprobates. Some came seeking riches, while others came to escape from the authorities. Some brought large sums of money, while others signed on as indentured servants just to cover the cost of their passage. So what was their reason? Was it religion, potential wealth, a sense of adventure or refuge from the authorities? The answer is, all of the above.

Yet there was something else. Something often described as, “better felt than spoken.” It was a yearning that lives deep in the soul of every human; a burn­ing desire that cannot be quenched. All have felt it, many have proclaimed it and some have fought and died for it. It began at the dawn of time and survives even as I type this article. It can be boiled down to a single word. A word which can make the heart beat faster and bring a lump to the throat. The word is FREEDOM! They risk all to gain it, and one hundred and forty-six years later their descendants pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to defend and preserve it.

Through hard work, and a reliance on divine providence, they carved a nation out of the wilderness. By the eighteenth century this “land of freedom” which they created had grown thirteen colonies. In 1754, war broke out in America between the British and colonist on one side, and the French, aided by some Indians, on the other. Known as the French and Indian War in America, it was but a portion of the Hundred Year War between France and Great Briton. On October 25, 1760, George William Fredrick was anointed King George III of England. Victory in the French and Indian War was costly for the British. At the war’s conclusion in 1763, King George III and his government looked to taxing the American colonies as a way of recouping their war costs. They were also looking for ways to reestablish control over the colonial governments that had become increasingly independent while the Crown was distracted by the war. Royal ineptitude compounded the problem. A series of actions including the Stamp Act (1765), the Townsend Acts (1767) and the Boston Massacre (1770), agitated the colonists, straining relations with the mother country. But it was the Crown’s attempt to tax tea that spurred the colonists to action and laid the groundwork for the American Revolution.

The Boston Tea Party, was carried out on the night of December 16, 1773. The Boston chapter of the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians, boarded three British ships in Boston Harbor and threw the cargoes of tea overboard. The crisis escalated and, with “The shot heard round the world,” the American Revolutionary War began at Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775. Six years later, on October 19, 1781, General Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown, VA. Although the war would last another year, the British defeat at Yorktown, for all practical purposes, ended the American Revolutionary War.

Six years later, on September 17, 1787, the Constitution for the United States of America was signed into law. Its preamble made it one of the most unique documents ever drawn up for governing mankind.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Committing on the Constitution, Daniel Webster warned:

“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”

For two hundred and twenty years, America headed the warning given by Daniel Webster. However, on January 21, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. Aided by a Democratic Congress, he immediately set out to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America from a Constitutional Republic to a Socialist state. America was suddenly faced with the greatest threat to our national sovereignty since the Signing of the Declaration of Independence. Our founders had three options; the soap box, the jury box and the cartridge box. They tried the first, were rejected by the second and were forced to resort to the third. They have left for us a fourth option; the ballot box.

Our choice is clear. Our duty is plain. Our course is obvious. If our nation is to survive, we must rid ourselves of all in Washington, both Republican and Democrat, who would destroy this great nation and replace them with men and women who will protect and preserve it. On Nov. 2nd, every true patriot must make their vote count.

We have held Tea Parties throughout the land, attended Town Halls and made our voices heard from sea to shinning sea. All to no avail. The time has come to end the talking and fight the war, just as our founding fathers did in 1776. Today we stand in their shoes. The winds blowing from Washington smell of evil, corruption and tyranny. We, like them, are faced with a government seeking to take away our cherished freedoms and God given rights. We, like them, have no representation in the halls of government. The hallowed halls of congress, once walked by statesmen dedicated to serving the interest of the people, are now occupied by power hungry politicians who only hear the voices of the special interests who purchased them. No longer listening to the will of the people, they walk in lockstep with their congressional leaders to do the bidding of Barak Obama, their great proponent of socialism.

The time for talk has ended and the time for action has arrived. “We the People” must take back our country, and restore our Constitution on November 2nd, or condemn our children and grandchildren to forever live under a socialist system. Ronald Reagan, the last of our great Presidents, laid it out as well as anyone can. His words, echoing through the ages, are even truer today than when he spoke them forty-six years ago.

“This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves…

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”