Thank You - For My Life

Imagine living in a society where a small group of men, call them “The Societal Board”, determines what is best for you and everybody else. The Board determines what time you wake up and what time you go to bed. The Board assign you a “job”, not based on your skills or enjoyment, but based on societal necessity. You work long hours out of duty to your fellow societal members and are not allowed any breaks. If you are good at your job, you are not allowed to advance. Advancement is putting yourself above the other members of society, which is not allowed. You are not paid for your efforts because you have no decision-making capability anyway. Your work is your service to your country. It is your duty. Your ultimate goal is to sacrifice your wants, desires, and ambitions, to somebody else. It does not matter who the faceless person is that you are sacrificing to – that person’s life has a higher societal value than yours. Anything that you do for yourself is selfish and therefore, evil.

Food is rationed to provide the bare minimum for everybody’s subsistence. Anything more than this would be selfish. If your child is deathly ill and needs a rare medicine, it is more virtuous for you to give that medicine to another child, even if you were holding the medicine in your hand. You must put other’s first. The entire society is built on this principle. Anything you do for yourself is bad. Anything you do for others is good. Regardless of the outcome.

Our freedom protects us from the society above. Freedom is the protection of our individual rights. We are not pieces on a chess board being controlled by a group, or Board, with our best interests being determined by somebody else. We are all free to make our own choices. We are free to pursue our own happiness and be the person that we want to be. We are free to live. We are free to the ownership of our own life. Not all societies are granted this right. Today is a day to honor that.

Veteran’s Day is a day to honor all of the brave men and women, who put their own life on the line, to ensure that we all maintain ownership of ours. Our free society would not exist without the people who defend it – militarily and intellectually. My largest and most emphatic “Thank You” goes out to everybody who has served, or is serving in the military right now. You are not only defending the greatest country on earth, but you are defending the greatest idea ever conceived. I also send out another huge “Thank You” to anyone who has ever stood up to intellectually defend the smallest minority on earth – the individual.