The IOU, We Owe To Be An American

Most of us never signed anything to be American.

We were born here, or we came and took an oath. Either way, nobody handed us a bill at the door. But there is a bill. It’s an IOU, and it came with the name. Tomorrow is a good day to remember what’s written on it.

The first line on that note is for the ones who paid in full. Men and women who left farms and towns and never came home. They gave everything they had, and most of them were young. They did not get to see what their sacrifice bought. We did. We are living in it right now. That is a debt no one can pay back. The best we can do is honor it by how we live.

The second line is the honor of the thing itself. Being born a citizen of this country is a gift you did nothing to earn. You did not choose it. You did not work for it. It was handed to you on your first day. There are people around the world who would give almost anything to stand where you are standing. A gift that big ought to make a person humble, not proud.

The third line is duty. A democracy is not a machine that runs itself. It runs on people showing up. Voting is part of it. So is serving on a jury, knowing who represents you, and speaking up at a meeting when something is wrong. These are not chores. They are the upkeep on the house we all live in. Skip the upkeep long enough and the roof comes down on everybody.

The fourth line is being civil. Citizen and civil come from the same old root. That is no accident. Being a citizen means living with people you don’t agree with and treating them decent anyway. You can argue hard. You can vote against them every time. But you don’t treat your neighbor like an enemy. The day we forget that, the country starts coming apart from the inside.

The fifth line is protecting it. Not just from enemies overseas. From neglect. From people who would bend the rules for their own side. From our own laziness, when it’s easier to look away than to stand up. Freedom is never lost all at once. It gets chipped away a piece at a time, while folks are busy with other things.

The sixth line is the Constitution. I think of it as the rules of conduct for a whole nation. It tells the government what it may do and what it may not. It tells us what we are owed and what we must respect. Rules only work when people hold to them, especially when it costs them something. A rule you only follow when it suits you is not a rule at all.

The seventh line is the rule of law. Nobody above it. Nobody below its protection. Not the rich, not the powerful, not the folks we happen to like. The law has to be the same for the man in the mansion and the man in the trailer. When it isn’t, people stop believing in it. When people stop believing in it, it stops working.

The eighth line nobody likes. Taxes. Let’s be honest, nobody enjoys paying them. But roads don’t pave themselves. Soldiers don’t feed themselves. Courts and schools and bridges all get paid for by somebody, and that somebody is us. You can argue about how the money gets spent, and you should. But paying your share is part of the deal.

These are just a few of the lines on that note. There are more. Every generation finds a few new ones. The list is long because the thing it buys is worth that much.

What it buys is freedom. Not the bumper sticker kind. The real kind. The freedom to speak your mind, worship how you choose, raise your kids and build a life without asking anybody’s permission. That kind of freedom is rare in this world. It has always been rare. And it has never been free.

So I don’t think anything on that list is too much to ask. Nothing is too much for the chance to live free. We won’t pay it perfectly. Nobody ever has. But we can try our best, every day, to be worth what was given to us.

Tomorrow is one payment on that note. Make it. Then keep paying the rest, the civil part, the honest part, the everyday part. That is the IOU we owe to be an American. It’s a debt worth carrying.

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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.

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