What The Flag Means To Me

2 Pages 474 Words

What the American Flag Means to

The American flag means something to everyone. To some it means a chance to live the way they dreamed about. To others it means that they have rights that can never be taken away from them. I could go on about what it means to others, but I'm going to tell you what the American flag means to me. To me the American flag means that I can follow my dreams to become who I want to be. All you need is a hard work ethic and a dream. This is the American way.
Over 200 years ago people came to the Americas in the hopes that they could have their basic human rights. The risk of death on the sea was very high and even higher for their children, but they knew that even death was better than not having those basic rights every human has. They came to have things like freedom of religion and freedom of speech, and they got them. It was a great time for humanity because it showed that they could fight back against a greater force and win. This was also the case in the Revolutionary war. We changed war by striking the enemy when they least expected it. We did what we needed to gain our rights, and we got them back.
But America is not all it is cracked up to be. We believed manifest destiny, the idea that one day America would extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and nothing would stop us. So we sent explorers, Lewis and Clark, to see how far we would have to settle. And we did settle all across North America, but we were not the first people to settle there. We came across a people who had completely different beliefs and thoughts than ourselves. They believed that they did not own the land, that they were a part of it. And these people were grateful for that. We saw them and labeled them as savages, and we took their land. And they kept loosing land, until they decided to fight back, and their act was justified. But we prevailed in the fight to keep their land, and we suppressed them and put them on small r...