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By James Riley
As I have told dozens of the
teachers who visit our farm, when we first began conducting
Revolutionary War field trips on Riley's Farm, I thought we would
perform--if we were lucky--perhaps 10 or 20 tours a year.
I thought my own passion for 18th century history, and the whole story
of universal human rights on display in the story of Lexington and
Concord, would have--at best--a limited audience.
I thought, in other words, I would be preaching to the choir for a few
kindred souls who knew Sam Adams was more than a beer label.
I could not have been more wrong.
From January to the end of June and from October to the middle of
December, we are performing the Revolutionary War Adventure for hundreds
of visitors a day, five days a week. I had my first inkling
of the story's universal appeal one day when I was leading a group of
Korean American boys through the orchard, in military formation, and I
heard one of them shout it out behind me, "this is COOL!"
The simple truths are universal. They transcend all
cultural, economic, and ethnic boundaries. An Italian
American and an African American an Asian American a Mexican American
and an Irish American and a Greek American all applaud long and loud
when they hear Patrick Henry's immortal words, "Give me Liberty or Give
me Death!" When they stand on
the battle line and I shout out the rallying cry, "will you be free or
slaves?" they all respond, without hesitation, "free!"
When I strike up the tune that was once "God Save the King," but that is
now "My country 'tis of thee," the voices start in, and they begin to
swell, and some afternoons you can hear hundreds of American voices
singing, with deep conviction, "from every mountain side, let freedom
ring."
Again, the simple truths are universal. No one wants to be a slave.
No one wants to have their parents rounded up and put in cattle cars.
No one wants to be told who or where to worship. No
one wants to have their earnings, their homes, their children stolen
from them, by arbitrary, arrogant, un-bridled authority.
Thomas Jefferson had it right. We are
endowed by our "Creator with certain unalienable rights."
This isn't just an outdated baroque English notion--it's a universal
conviction--a granite pillar at the center of our souls.
Tyrants can't stand the notion that we--as Americans--derive our rights
not from neighborhood committees, not from academic studies, not from tepid
consensus, but from God Himself--from our "Creator."
Tyrants hate this conviction with a passion. That's why China rounded up
another 80 Christian pastors this week. That's
why Stalin and Hitler and Castro and Pol Pot had to subjugate their
churches before they could subjugate and torture their own people.
Americans HATE tyranny and whether
it takes the form of an English aristocrat or a Taliban zealot, they
will--as Jefferson predicted--water the tree of liberty with the blood
of the tyrant every time. Freedom is what
we have in common as Americans, and that is what we teach here.
I'm struck--over and over again--by how completely universal that notion
is. Left, right, or middle of the road-- Americans
lock arms on the story of liberty.
We spend a lot of time these days talking about--and even celebrating
our differences, and I love some of those differences.
I married a Greek girl and she feeds me well--with foods that I never
grew up with as a child. I love Mariachi bands and German Oktoberfests and Irish music. I am fiercely proud of
my pioneer stock--of ancestors who braved the wilderness in four
different American centuries. I love New
England architecture, but I also love Spanish courtyards and Swedish log
cabins and Irish stone walls.
I will tell you, though, that--as Americans--there is one difference we
should NOT celebrate. There is nothing
particularly joyful about Castro's Cuba or the moral lethargy of
modern day France. I see no real cause for
celebration in pondering Saudi Arabia's total lack of religious
tolerance or the brutal rape squads of the Sudanese Muslims.
The canine appetite for power demonstrated by China's political leaders
isn't something I quietly celebrate whenever I order--and thoroughly
enjoy--Mushu Pork. America's immigrants should
be taught that their cultural traditions are valuable, but their
political assumptions should be left at the border.
They left slaves; they arrive sons and daughters of Liberty.
It isn't about the differences between the cultures and the ethnicities;
it's about people who believe in freedom and those who don't.
And, perhaps just as important, they need to know that Americans fight
for that liberty. A friend of mine has a
ministry to recently arrived Christians from the middle east.
These are folks who have endured tyrannical Muslim majorities most of
their lives, and some of them don't really believe any government will
ever truly honor freedom and promote justice, but immigrants from all
nations need to know that Americans will gladly lock arms with
people of every color to protect what their ancestors have purchased
with blood. Americans don't stand
quivering at the door, asking quietly for their God given rights.
They demand them. As one commentator put it, liberty
is not really ever given. It is taken.
Well, at Riley's Farm, we teach
that story. Along with their teachers, and their
parents, we are happy to be teaching a new generation of children the
most vital of American truths, and in so doing, we are proud to
be, literally, making new Americans every day.
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