This past summer I discovered that I had been living in a bubble.  My family and I were enjoying a day at Cedar Point in Ohio.  At the end of the day, there was a video and fireworks display that included some song that I had never heard before, but clearly everyone else around me had.  Not only were they familiar with the song, they were singing it, many with tears coming from their eyes.  Can you guess the song?  God Bless America? No.  America? No.  The Star Spangled Banner? No.  It appears there is a new anthem for our country, one I had never heard of before...Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American."

As I listened to the words of the song, I kept getting hung up on a repeated refrain:

That I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

What bothered me was the notion that soldier gave my rights to me.  This was just wrong, I thought.  "We the People" declared those rights; we claimed them for ourselves.  Brave soldiers have surely fought and died to protect those rights and that freedom, but they did not give them to me.

Last night, Gov. Palin told a disturbing story about a teacher who took all of the desks out of her classroom and would not give a desk to a student until the student explained what she or he needed to do to earn one.  After many failed answers on the part of the students, we learn that twenty veterans silently brought the desks into the classroom, after which the teacher explained that the students did not have to earn the desks because these vets had already earned them for the students.

Suddenly, I was back at Cedar Point listening to the Lee Greenwood lyrics.  Soldiers didn't earn those desks.  We provide desks for our children, hoping that they will make the best use of them that they can.

I have the highest admiration for the women and men in the military and for those who have already served in the military.  The willingness to lay down one's life, to be wounded, to just slog through deserts or beaches or jungles because you want to defend a country, defend ideas, and defend those you do not even know, is breathtakingly wonderful.

But soldiers to not give us our freedom, our rights, or our school desks, and to think otherwise is very, very dangerous.  For if we think soldiers have given us these things, then it would not be surprising to conclude that they can take them from us as well.