What makes America Beautiful #americathebeautiful #july4th #independenceday

Whether it's me or others teaching, people are kind of waking up, I think, to the truth, just naturally. We teach people history because what happens if we don't teach people? We're going to repeat it. The Founding Fathers created the avenue through which brave people can stand up for justice without being assassinated before they can make a change. We are only going to make this new form of government work if we all have some moral principles. Common values of freedom and freedom of speech, freedom to protest, freedom to create your own business, freedom to fail. This is America, so it's this kind of land of opportunity and you can do whatever you want. Go outside of the United States and then come back. I guarantee you will appreciate living in America that much more. Hello everyone. Today, I'm in Port Jervis, New York State. I'm here for the first America the Beautiful Festival. I'm going to have a conversation with Evan, who is an English professor and a poet. And we're going to talk about what makes America beautiful. What is the American heritage that is worth preserving? And what can happen if this heritage disappears? And today, July 4th, we're starting to have a country. And we're going to do a good job and we're all going to win. Airbus America. This festival is about preserving America's heritage. That's right. What do they mean with this American heritage and what's worth preserving? Right. I mean, it's weird because America is only a few hundred years old. So it's kind of a baby. In terms of a modern history, America is actually the oldest country in some respect. Because we had the first kind of modern constitution. And then everybody's kind of copied our constitution. And they've all kind of cherished the human rights, the individual liberty. America set the gold standard in that everybody else is kind of following along. Like Italy, their constitution is only since, what, after World War II, I think. About the Italian constitution, it was the result of a check and different political parties. Communist party included. That they got together and they had to mediate. They had to get an agreement, a common agreement, on how to make, let's say, the country function after the war. And this is very different from the United States. Because basically you had founding fathers who were sharing common principles. That's true. It was built on a kind of foundation that people had these natural God-given rights. They call it natural law, actually. It's something that you naturally have. Now, today, people talk a lot about the constitution and that people love the constitution. And they kind of, you know, kind of rest their case and say, we need to follow the constitution. But actually, originally, there were deeper things beyond that. It was built on a kind of spiritual foundation. Like, we are only going to make this new form of government work if we all have some moral principles. Essentially, we believe in God. Because you have to have the sense that, like, somebody's watching you. You have to be a good person. You have to try to be a good person. Because if you don't, the whole thing kind of starts to crumble, which is kind of what we're seeing today. Three shots in less than a minute. Three shots. Impressive, right? Almost four. You feel the heat, right? Feel the heat on that. I mean, it's not incredibly hot. No, but if I fire ten rounds through that, can you imagine how hot that's going to be? And you are a teacher. Yeah. So, you are doing your best to teach kids who will be the new generation. And you presented these problems to me that, ideally, they need to be fixed from a moral standpoint. When you talk to the kids about it, they just kind of naturally get it. This is something I've seen over years of teaching. And it actually, it helps to create, to put everything in perspective. Because right now, if you teach history based on a textbook, they break it down into all kind of economic theories and political theories. But when you just see that it really does come back to good and evil, then it makes everything more clear and simple. It kind of streamlines or makes it all a bit more elegant. Most of Americans are just kind of in the middle, I think. And so, it's just a matter of persisting, not lowering our values, trying to stick to our values. Whether it's me or others teaching, people are kind of waking up, I think, to the truth, just naturally. Don't just follow along if you feel like things aren't going right, you know. You have to kind of stand up. I think a lot of people are already doing that, especially you can see in the homeschool movement. Even though I'm a teacher, I see a lot of things going right there. Those people are homeschooling can hopefully come back to the schools. Right. Because we're going to improve those schools, hopefully. If you look there, you know, tearing down statues of Confederate leaders and stuff like that. You know, how are our kids going to learn about what we did? You know what I mean? I mean, OK, yeah, it's sad what happened to slavery. It happened. But there's nothing that we can do to change that. You know what I mean? It happened. Let's teach about it. So it doesn't happen again. You told me actually you're a poet. That's right. And when I think about that, I think about beauty. And what made you think, hey, I want to go down that road. I want to actually be a poet. That's right. I mean, I was doing traditional poetry and a friend of mine, Joshua Phillip, he was also doing it. And we were we were working together and we both kind of came together. We said we've been submitting our poetry. It's just getting rejected just because it has rhyme in it, for example, and it was traditional. Well, let's just start our own poetry society. And, you know, this is America. So it's this kind of land of opportunity and you can do whatever you want. We started in 2012. So but it's you know, the more we've done it, the more people have been like, wow, this is something we miss because unfortunately, the poetry establishment has been kind of taken over by modern poetry that appeals to a very small group of people, not really the number of people in the U.S. who really like poetry, but kind of just the people who are getting paid in universities and colleges often. I used to go to these reenactments when I was a kid. And then one year I said, you know, I'm going to I'm going to be in a reenactment. I'm going to do it. That's where I met my wife, who's behind me. I met her and her whole family reenacts and we all get along. So now we do this for the love of history. You know, we teach people history because what happens if we don't teach people? We're going to repeat it, correct? What do you think is going to happen if these principles, these American values, they're not cherished and they disappear? What will start to happen in the United States is what we what we what we see in like somewhere like Mexico, where you have a big division, you have a lot more poverty, you have a lot more crime, you have a lot more drugs and people who are addicted to drugs. We're already heading in that direction. And in fact, a lot of Mexicans want to even though they have what should be an amazing climate and beautiful beaches, they're coming to our country. So you have to wonder, you know, why is that? I'm just a regular average person who works just like everybody else. I have a nine to five job, but I do this as a passion. And as my love of this passion of history, I found a relative of mine who was actually a surgeon for the Revolutionary War. And his name is Dr. Daniel Wood. This is his actual writing. This is a medical reference notebook from his diary from Florida, New York in 1765. That's interesting that he was referencing corruption as a disease. The big government, it's kind of an addiction. See, once you start voting for people, which is how this whole democracy thing works, it can be a problem when it's like, I'm going to give, the government is going to give you what you want, or they're going to promise to give you what you want, but they're going to have to get more control, more power. And it creates kind of a vicious cycle. So this is where you need to have a moral foundation, because once you take that out, then it just turns into like, you're addicted to growing your government. And that's where we are today. How are we going to solve this problem? More government. And if you don't have a solution and you're in the government, then somebody else is going to get voted in, because they can claim that you're not doing anything, right? Well, you're doing nothing. So this is the kind of problem of democracy on its own. You need to have a democracy with a kind of spiritual foundation, you could say moral foundation, that's deeper than even a document like the constitution. You see that tent right over there on the right-hand side there? I am sleeping in that tent tonight. Yes, I am. Just like my forefathers did, all 40 of them. And believe it or not, six to eight guys would sleep in that tent sideways, sideways, just like this. So some of their feet would stick out. They would lay straw or whatever they could gather brush-wise to make it as soft as possible. And then they would sleep in it. And they would take turns sleeping in it. Like they would have a night shift that was on duty. So they would switch. I'm a poet, but he doesn't like my poetry. I teach history. Yeah, yeah, U.S. history. In the distant past, I was a teacher in China, and I taught business classes and then English. I really appreciated the time there, because it made me appreciate living in America. And over the years, I've told my students, if you can save a little money, go outside of the United States and then come back, and I guarantee you will appreciate living in America that much more. And this one experience I had, a rickshaw carrier who had apparently, you know, tumbled to the ground and had an accident. He was bloody. I got off my bike, checked to see if he was okay, you know, helped him. And he said, okay, I'm fine, you can go. So I got on my bike and I rode home. And I was just thinking, why were there so many people riding past him? And then it just clicked. And they didn't want to get involved in another person's problems. And I felt like the communist culture in China has stripped people's humanity from them. So I came back to America with just this deep, deep appreciation for the founding fathers. The founding fathers created the avenue through which brave people can stand up for justice without being assassinated before they could make a change. When you go experience another nation, especially a communist nation, you feel like you've been blessed to live in a free land. Also, I just want to add the fact that a Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish person or people with different ethnicities can be good friends in America. A Catholic can be almost best friends here with a non-Catholic, with a non-religious person. Because we could share American values together, common values of freedom and freedom of speech, freedom to protest, freedom to create your own business, freedom to fail and not be jailed or have severe consequences. And you still interact with each other. I think that's neat about the United States. As they say, it's easier to be a communist in a free country. Try to be a free man in a communist country. That's right. It's one thing to read it in a book and it's another thing to come out here and experience it in person. Okay, that was a great conversation with Evan. I'm glad, actually, we bumped into Albert. And my takeaway is that moral foundation is everything. You can have the best country in the world with the best form of government you can think of. But if you don't have moral standards, you yourself as an individual is not going to last. Eventually, it's going to fall and it's going to be chaos. This is my takeaway for today. I hope it helped. Have a good one. Take care. Ciao.