Law Day and Democracy

Last week, the Worcester County Bar Association hosted its annual Law Day Breakfast at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Each year the WCBA hosts an essay competition, and this years winner was Tylor Liljegren, an eight-grade student at Turkey Hill Middle School in Lunenburg. Tylor's essay, posted below, should serve as a reminder to all of us who often forget how fortunate we are to be Americans.

Democracy

This is a silly question that no doubt has been uttered by the lips of many American youths, “Why should I care?” It seems my generation lacks what past generations thrived on; a drive, a commitment, a passion, you know those things that made us free in the first place. America is just a baby. We are fragile. Nations have come and gone before us like the tides of the oceans that cradle us. Our democracy is what makes us strong, what makes us standout, what makes us proud to say we are a working part of the greatest patriotic machine on earth.

There’s a little village in Hungary called Tiszakecske and it’s where my Papa fled to America from during the Hungarian Revolution. He was only fifteen, and his mother would not join him, but the idea of America and the freedom it advocated was a sweet one and worth the chance. He left the only home he ever knew, a place where his father was labeled a martyr and put to death, a place where you couldn’t walk down the street without seeing a Red man with a machine gun, a place that used to be so beautiful. It took two long years spent in and out of various refugee camps, but he got here, and that made all the difference.

We hear stories all the time about genocide in Africa and bombings between Israel and Palestine; it’s hard to think of these things deeply as they are sadly becoming our daily reality. We are thousands of miles away from these places, that’s the gist of it, but what makes us so different? Why are we spared of this day to day misery that casts itself over certain parts of the Earth, a lurking shadow? Do we not all have the same beating hearts? Do we not all breathe the same air? Certainly we do, but we were not all lucky enough to be born with that same liberty that stands tall and strident holding her touch proudly and greeting all those who come.

The word democracy itself leaves a chummy, warm, perhaps familial feeling; a sensation of being united, not always in opinion, but most certainly in the ability to have one. We are a united people, and there is nothing, not a war, not a bombing, or a terrorist attack that can erase the indelible ink that wrote the Constitution. Consequently, when one says they don’t care about their rights it’s not only a naïve statement, but also very selfish when one thinks about the things some less fortunate people would give for them.

An estimated twenty-five thousand men died in the Revolutionary War, that’s not counting the wounded or those who died in the proceeding wars trying to keep our values whole. Every one of those people stared death in the face just for my right to say, write, and believe whatever I think to be true. Now, I am aware that that particular war happened two hundred and twenty five years ago, and there is nothing I can do to bring those people back, but I cannot let those soldiers die in vain. I cannot forget what John Adams did to negotiate the peace treaty with Great Britain or what Betsy Ross sewed into the first American flag. This is the very least that I could do.