The Lincoln County News reporters sit through a lot of municipal meetings and gatherings that have to do with local governance. That’s part of the gig and part of our duty as journalists.
However, in most towns, before we sit through the meeting at hand, we stand and place our hand over our heart for the Pledge of Allegiance.
In a national political climate that seems increasingly divided, we’d like to remind our readers this Independence Day that despite the feelings of division, we are in this together.
While we celebrate America and the ideas this nation was founded on, we want to hold up the ideal that we can and should work with each other and across the aisle because that’s the only way a wound heals properly: it must be brought together.
Let our extended hands be the stitches we need to recover and to make our country stronger.
The United States is an ideal of freedom we must strive toward every day. Every time we stand up at a select board meeting to recite the pledge, we see it as a thesis statement of indivisibility.
Everything that follows that pledge is an attempt to move forward and toward a better America. But to make that a reality, we have to move together.
The next time you stand, remember you are reciting a pledge to a flag that represents more than a nation: it’s a symbol of the innate right to justice and liberty for all people and should act as a uniting force to celebrate what we have in common.
It’s our job Americans to honor that pledge and to move forward, together, indivisible, for liberty and justice for all.
At no point is everyone going to agree we’re moving in the right direction. That doesn’t mean we aren’t trying.
The leaders who founded this country did not all agree, but they found a way to build a framework they could all support. As we celebrate our country’s birthday, let us use their example to renew our efforts. Uniting is hard, but in our microcosm of America here in Lincoln County, we should set the example and work to come together.
