Why I Love the USA - Bianca Aguglia - Safe and Encouraged

It used to be that the first thought that came to mind when having to explain why I love the USA was that I felt safe here and encouraged to do my best. Things have changed though. The USA is turning into a place where we can be verbally harassed, canceled on social media, or fired from our jobs for saying reasoned out things that don’t match or that question what certain powerful people or groups say and do. That’s why, during the past few years, I became cautious about what I say, and there are times when I feel too discouraged and too depressed to do anything, let alone do my best.

That’s not the kind of person I want to be though, and that’s not the kind of person my children, my family, our USA, or our world deserves. So, after some soul searching, I decided to start a collection of positive and inspiring stories of past and present people who love the USA. 

I’m doing this because, even though I don’t feel as safe and as encouraged as I used to feel, I am still completely in love with America. If anything, I love our country even more now that I understand how unique, how precious, and how fragile is our Founding Fathers’ ideal of a nation “conceived in liberty” and based on the “self-evident truths” “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

I want to protect that ideal. I want to see it endure and continue to be an inspiration for myself, my family and my friends, for other people who love the US, and for future generations who deserve to feel safe and encouraged to do their best.

One of the ways I’ll do that is with this collection of stories. In a world where some seem determined to focus only on the things America did or does wrong, I want this collection to be a reminder that so many other people still love the US and see the many more things our country does right. They see that, in its imperfect way, America is perfect. Our country is truly worth loving and protecting. 

I hope you find these stories encouraging. I hope they make you feel connected to people like myself who deeply love the US. Finally, I hope they make you realize that it is still possible for our country to remain an inspiring ideal and that, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, our devotion can carry on the work of the many who lived before us and sacrificed everything for the US. Our devotion can ensure that “these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Thank you for reading. I wish you a wonderful day in our beautiful USA.