 So, I was at my son's spring program recently, and it was the end of the year program. It was a few days before Memorial Day, and so it's a very pro-American program. They're singing songs, and they're like America the Beautiful and the National Anthem, and they're thanking people for all their service, they're singing the Armed Forces melody. They're doing all this very pro-America stuff. And there was several hundred adults in the room, and everybody is clapping and getting excited. And about 10 to 15 minutes in the program, I can't help but sitting there, and I'm thinking, are we all just getting duped? Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense. So I've been thinking about this recently, with Memorial Day and this program that I attended, and the recent mass shootings that have happened in this nation, and just kind of where things are at and what's going on. I think it comes down to this idea that there are two Americas, or at least one of them in our mind. There's the real America, where we live, and what's going on right now. And then there's the one in our mind, the country that was founded on individual liberty that has a constitution that limits the government, that maximizes individual freedom, that has all of those things, and that's the America that we want to celebrate and be excited about, and thank people for being in the military for and all that kind of thing. And that's obviously good and important, and I love those principles. I don't know of any nation in the history of the world that was founded on principles of individual liberty like America. Bar none, you'll find nothing close. However, there's that, there's the idea of America, as we'll call it, and then there's what we have in reality. And I was sitting in this spring program, people are getting all excited, and they could help but thinking, wait a second, wait a second, I don't know what we're all cheering for. We just went through two years of the grossest government overreach in history. And I mean, I'm including the internment camps for the Japanese Americans in World War II. This is one of the grossest overreaches of government to limit the rights of its citizens ever. And it's not over. It's not like we defeated the great sickness, as we'll call it. And all of the overreaches that came with that, and to just to, you know, those people are all in jail, they've been punished, like appropriate measures have been taken to make sure that doesn't happen. No, no, no, no, no, no. We're still fighting that battle. And you're seeing that right now with this latest gun control push, right? There was the shooting in the school down in Texas, horrible event. This Border Patrol agent who gets a call from his wife, drives, borrows a shotgun from his barber, drives 40 miles to deal with the problem. Why was the problem still going on? Oh, because the police were standing outside doing nothing. Well, well, hold on, I shouldn't say doing nothing. They were actively arresting parents who were trying to get into the school to save their kids. So they were doing something, but they weren't dealing with the shooter, right? There's some other different lessons we could talk about there, but just stick with me here. So those are the people that I'm supposed to hand my guns over to now. The people who prevented parents from rescuing the children and stood by while they can hear, they can hear the gunshots. They're standing outside the school doing nothing, again, maybe not doing nothing arresting parents while kids are dying. Kids are calling 911 from the room and the police are doing nothing. Those are the people I'm supposed to hand my guns over to. So I find it interesting that this is the one that they're going to go all in on for their gun control push, right? But as of today, there's some judiciary committee in the house was holding talks on more gun control, you know, some rhinos are going to fold somewhere in here. The president's calling for it, yada, yada, yada, because you shouldn't own guns because some people do evil things. You should give your guns to the police so they can arrest you and you try to arrest your children. I mean, this all makes total perfect sense. So I say all that because that's the America we're living in right now. That's reality. And the food shortages haven't even started yet and we all know that's coming. So I have my, so I'm thinking about this and I'm asking myself uncomfortable questions like, has any American soldier actually died for freedom in America in the last 25, 30 years? I mean, since the global war on terror, have Americans who have gone and spent their life and died and were injured and had limbs blown off and all these things, did they do that for America or did they just go fight the regime's wars so that the rich can grow more powerful and we can lose what little we do have? Right? Like these are the uncomfortable questions that you have to start asking. How long are we going to go on to continue to pretend that the current America, the real actual America where we live and do our lives, is this great amazing thing just like we founded it to be rather than say, wait a second here, there's some severe problems. There's a time to celebrate and there's a time to mourn and I don't think we're in the celebration phase of the life cycle of our nation. And I think that needs to be thought of. Now I love America. I love the principles upon which America was founded more than anyone I personally know. And I try to celebrate that when I can and remember the 4th of July and remember the Battle of Lexington and Concord and so forth and so on. But I'm sitting here and I'm asking myself, where's the freedom? Where's the actual celebration part? Because any sane person I think would look at the situation and say, no, no, no, you shouldn't be celebrating. And if you're celebrating, you're just putting this kind of malaise on it. It feels very dystopian novel. Like the people celebrate freedoms, even though they don't have them, right? The people get all excited and thankful for the nation, even though the nation is what's keeping them down. So I hope I didn't ruin your Memorial Day or ruin your current day. But these are the things we need to think about as we go into this summer, where the government and the progressives are going to continue to push and push and push and because they can't ever stop. They're going to continue to push to come for all the things you have. And you have to decide what you're going to do about it. Do brave deeds and endure.