Safeguard our homes, nation
In many ways, I see my home as a microcosm of the nation.
I see rare exceptions as to how I secure my home and what my neighbors are doing. My home is locked – front and back doors, as well as windows – to prevent any unwanted guess or intruders from entering.
In fact, now I, and many of my neighbors, have extra security, including cameras and alarms to enhance our home’s security.
Why do we go to all the trouble to secure and safeguard our homes? In our home, we have precious items to protect. We protect our family from intruders. We secure our home from unlawful entry to protect our assets, such as money, jewelry or furniture. We have put a lot of hard work into buying or building our home and furnishing it. We are proud of owning a home where our kids can grow up and be safe and secure.
When my kids would bring home friends, I wanted to know a little about those friends. Where did they live? Who where their parents? Did they go to school with you? I wanted to know who was influencing my children, and if I approved of that person being there. Many times, I would restrict people from my home if they misbehaved or damaged the property. They were to respect what I had worked so hard for and sacrificed so much of my time for. If they could not understand that, then they could leave and destroy someone else’s home, not mine.
In one home I owned, I built a fence around the yard to accomplish a few things. One, I wanted to have a safe area where my young children could play without strangers looking in or coming into the yard. I also wanted to keep out stray dogs that were roaming the neighborhood and could have harmed my children. My neighbors all seemed to understand why the fence was being constructed and agreed that it was necessary to keep my children safe.
Why would we think about our nation any differently than our own homes? We need to secure our nation’s front and back doors to prevent unlawful entry. We need to secure our borders in any fashion that makes sense, walls. If we have no borders, we have no nation.
When people ring the doorbell of our nation, we need to know who they are. Are they friend or foe? They should not sneak in the back door. If they will do no harm to our nation, we can then accept them. If they misbehave, we must ask them to leave. We don’t want bad characters entering our home and causing harm to our families or our nation. Too many people have died to build a strong and decent nation. We are proud of our nation and will fight anybody who tries to harm it.
Both our homes and our nation are precious and we need to defend them with our lives.
Tom Flickinger is the president of Tom Flickinger & Associates, a consulting firm.