For any American who is worried about this country, who feels our core values slipping away, who believes something has to be done to change the direction of our nation before all is lost—the NRA is your refuge. It is your place to stand and fight with Americans just like you, for all that is good and right.
Everywhere you look, something has gone wrong. The core values we believe in, the things we care about most are under attack as never before. President Barack Obama, his axis in Congress and his media elite are gnawing at the country’s foundations intent on replacing our hallowed national character with their tyrannical political culture. It’s as if the values we’ve always lived by and counted on no longer matter, no longer make a difference.
I’m talking about values like truth, honesty, kindness, virtue, generosity, humility, mutual respect, plain decency—the bedrock values of our society.
What does it say about a political culture where madmen are famous and good guys forgotten? Where crimes go unpunished, leaving violent criminals to prey upon the innocent, and where tax collectors are turned into secret police for the government?
What does it say about a political culture in which the law has become a weapon wielded against ordinary citizens by those in power? How can good, decent Americans be expected to have faith in law and order if the law is selectively enforced? If the law is changed at the whims of the powerful? If the law is used for the advantage of the political elites and at the disadvantage of the rest of us? How can citizens respect laws in a nation in which those laws are so unequally and arbitrarily applied?
The list of lawless actions by this administration is virtually limitless: Operation “Fast and Furious” supplying guns to the Mexican drug cartels; using the IRS to harass and destroy political opposition; ordering free-speech gag-rules; releasing a massive number of criminal illegal aliens to prey on innocent Americans; refusing to secure the nation’s borders.
But there is more: negotiating with terrorists and freeing the worst Islamist killers from detention; abandoning commitments to our allies; using federal bank regulators to destroy lawful businesses like gun dealers; violating sunshine laws shutting down citizens’ lawful access to actions driving government decisions and mandates; massive surveillance of private communications between Americans, then blatantly lying to Congress about it.
Paramount among these massive abuses, the Obama administration has short-circuited and defied the constitutional powers reserved to Congress through agenda-driven executive orders.
Obama’s promise of the “most transparent administration in history” has morphed into “the most lawless administration in history.”
With the Obama wrecking crew holding the executive branch and the majority in the U.S. Senate, the character of our nation—all of our values—are at risk. These aren’t old values. They aren’t new values. They are core freedoms that have always defined us as a nation: our right to speak; our right to assemble; our right to privacy; and the freedom to work, practice our religion and raise our families the way we see fit.
You know what I mean. The freedom to live as good, honest, decent Americans. The liberty to live and believe as we choose, as individuals sanctified in personal freedom.
Take the freedom that comes through the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—to live without fear and tyranny as responsible, good people who exercise our individual right to keep and bear arms to defend our families, our communities and our nation.
The political elites and media elites mock us, calling our belief in individual liberty “out of date.” They say we’re old-fashioned and out-of-step in these international, global community times.
We aren’t out of date. We aren’t out of step. We are Americans.
Our nation’s founding fathers carefully crafted a Bill of Rights—an articulation of personal liberties woven into the entire fabric of our free society. When any of those freedoms are threatened anywhere, they must be defended and protected everywhere.
So to preserve our values and protect our freedom, America needs the good guys to step up like never before. That’s us. We are the good guys who will not stand idly by as the dishonest political and media elites strip our values away.
The National Rifle Association—all that we believe in and fight for—has become a metaphor for the core American liberty we all want preserved. The NRA is where you resist, and stand and fight to put America back on track to restore and preserve our individual freedom.
We must stop President Barack Obama’s ongoing war on our freedom—his threat to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” We can succeed by working to organize as never before to elect a U.S. House of Representatives and a U.S. Senate majority that will fight for our freedom and trump the Obama agenda.
Standing together with family, friends, co-workers, colleagues and neighbors at the polls in November, we can and must reclaim the America our Founders and generations of patriots have fought to preserve.
I give you this solemn promise: If we join together—as good and decent strong-hearted Americans—we will help lead this nation to the dawn of an America renewed in truth, justice, opportunity, hope and individual liberty for all.
Wayne’s column appears in the NRA publications American Rifleman, American Hunter and America’s First Freedom. Click here to get a discounted NRA Annual Membership for only $25 a year complete with your choice of magazine delivered to your door.