Citizen Soldier Essay, Research Paper

Citizen Soldier

By: Brian Williams

We all want our rights, but they must be balanced by our responsibilities. This

quote has a very strong message. As American’s, we have a duty to respond in a

time of need. Not only should we go to war if we are called for, we should have

pride in our nation at all times. Many American’s don’t realize how lucky we

are. In America there are so many possibilities. A person born to a poor

family can go from rags to riches. Most of us don’t have to worry about getting

a meal, or having a place to live. People in other countries deal with the

simple things that we regret everyday. To have all our rights as American’s we

have certain responsibilities to keep these rights possible.

In the filmBrave Rifles, the bravery of the GI’s is inspiring. Several examples

were given where the soldiers didn’t have a chance but they would hold off the

German army all by themselves to buy their fellow soldiers some time. It is

just awesome that they were able to do this. Many of them probably had families

back home, but they put this aside and died for a greater cause. Our freedom.

These soldiers helped make America what it is today. They stood for what

America stands for. Opportunity Freedom, and Wealth. So many people die each

year trying to come to the United States from Mexico and Cuba. People complain

about the increase of population of these people even in this area. I really

don’t have much to say about it because if I was from Cuba or Mexico, my main

goal would be to make it to America. You really can’t blame those people for

wanting to come here.

In America, if you come up with an idea and it sells well then you can become

very wealthy off of it. For example, Steve Jobs and Steve Wazniak started

building circuit boards in their garage. They were progressing toward the first

computer that someone could have at their house. They developed programs that

would be easy for a person to use. They founded a company called Apple

Computers which dominated the market for many years. At the same time there was

a man by the name of Bill Gates that was writing an operating system he called

DOS or the disk operating system. He signed deals with companies such as IBM.

Bill Gates founded Microsoft and is now the richest man in the world. Only in

America could this happen. We have the ability to shape our lives and our fate.

People always complain about all the taxes that we have to pay. Well I would

much rather pay all the taxes we do, then live in some dump over in the Middle

East. Those people are all brain washed. I’m not discriminating against them

because of there religion. The fact that they hate us for the way we live is

just ridiculous. We never went over and caused mass destruction in their petty

little countries, because we don’t agree on the way they live. Well I guess

what goes around comes around. Now they will be made an example.

The one thing that I can’t stand the most, is when people are all mad because

someone has more money then them. There are all these people that think that we

should disperse the money around. They think that the really rich people

shouldn’t be as rich and there money should be given to the poor. That is just

a bunch of crap. People that have a lot of money worked for it and it is theirs

to keep. Those people just think that everything should just come easy to them,

because they are lazy. If those people want it to be that way we should just

send them to Cuba. It would all just be socialism. This would go against

everything that America stands for.

One thing that really gets to me in our nations history is Vietnam. It isn’t

the reason why we went over there that bothers me. I think that stopping the

spread of communism is a very good cause. The thing that bothers me is the way

the soldiers were treated when they came home. They went over there and fought

for our country, and then they came home expecting a warriors welcome. That is

far from what they got. I think it is terrible how people didn’t realize that

there were probably a lot of soldiers that didn’t agree with the war but still

fought for their country. That is one of our responsibilities. We need to

support other American’s in a time of war.

When I was planning my future, the didn’t give much thought about the military.

I would not be accepted anyways. Even if I could be accepted it just didn’t

seem like the right path for me. When I look at the military I respect the men

that go into the selective services greatly. It takes a lot of guts and

determination to make it through the whole thing. Especially the Marines, from

what I have seen. Not only do the soldiers have to be physically fit they also

have to be mentally strong. They make you a killing machine. People that go

into the military sometimes come out a completely different person. They are

sometimes given direction in their life. They sometimes come out with a whole

different prospective on life.

Becoming the greatest nation in the world has changed the whole world. Our

language is being learned by thousands of people in several different countries.

Even the Chinese are learning our language Some people say that our students

are really far behind in learning other countries languages. I don’t think we

need to learn the other countries languages if everyone is going to learn ours

anyways. As long as we stay on top as the dominate country then we will be

okay. Some countries try to prevent our influences. In France, many technical

words were adopted from us. Finally the government of France decided they had

enough and decided to induct new words into the French language to replace the

English words for new technology. Even know people speak English in Great

Britain, it is really a totally different language. Our English has evolved

into American English. The foreign exchange students have told me that most of

the stuff in Europe, for the younger generation, is in English. Things such as

posters advertising concerts. One thing that is upsetting is that in California

they actually took a vote on if they wanted to teach Spanish as the main

language the schools. That would really put those kids at a serious

disadvantage if they wanted to move to a different location.

There have been many soldiers fight to make America what it is today. Many men

lost their lives to give us the freedom we have today. Our freedom should never

be taken for granted. Nor should our opportunity. The braveness of the GI’s in

the movie Brave Rifles should be an inspiration to all Americans. If there is

one responsibility that we should make sure we uphold, it would be to keep

America free.