To Whom It May Concern,

After reading the article titled “Have We Ever Been Great?” in your paper dated April 4, 2016, I think that there should be a response. 

I am a proud retired member of the GREATEST military in the world. I am a proud citizen of the greatest country in the world. 

I spent 25 years protecting the rights of ALL CITIZENS in this great nation. I pledged to protect the greatest document ever written by a free nation. This document, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, gives freedoms to citizens of this great country. Freedoms which other countries do not give their citizens. 

One right and freedom is that of speech. I agree with the freedom of speech. However, I believe that it is a duty of ALL citizens of this great nation to understand why it is a GREAT nation.   

This country is not perfect, yet it is great. If Mr. Michael Wurst believes that the slogan “Make America Great Again” should be “better written as ‘Make America Great for Once’” this really shows that he has his head in the sand. 

Speaking of sand, I would invite Mr. Wurst to visit countries I have spent many years being deployed too; countries that do not have the freedoms that

America does. 

These countries are in turmoil and have been for decades. Where people are not worried about minimum wage increases, but just making enough to feed their families a bowl of rice every day or about the water they have to walk miles to get. Where children wish they had educational opportunities. Not whether or not they will get a free education or whether or not there will be income equality and wealth division. 

Even more so, if Mr. Wurst thinks that there is a greater country to live besides America, I would be very happy to purchase him a one way ticket to that country. I would also assist in his process of denouncing any ties to this country he thinks is not great. 

Too many think in this day and time, that “Everyone Should get a Trophy,” that the hard workers should not get rich and that the slack and lazy should be rewarded the same as those who work hard. Entitlement world. 

Folks that think like Mr. Wurst are lost in fiction. It is not a myth that America is great or that there is “excellence” in America. America excels when the citizens work at excelling, not when they work harder to get more by not working at all.

I was told once by two foreign military officers, in the middle of war-torn Bosnia, that America will “implode due to an internal division, that the fragmented society will destroy the nation. That hyphenated America is a death sentence.”  These foreign officers were from Great Britain and Russia. The Brit was a son of Japanese parents and he said he was a Brit, not an Asian-Brit as there is no such thing. The Russian officer was a former Soviet Union officer who said American people do not understand what socialism does to a nation and what this world would be like if America was not so “Great.”

Mr. Wurst disrespected all those that served this nation in uniform. Those that died and those buried in American Military cemeteries around the world. “All gave some, some gave all.” His comment about America not being “the defenders of democracy or personal liberties abroad” would be met with disagreement if Mr. Wurst would ask

the citizens of Germany, France and Italy, etc. 

Less than one percent of American citizens serve or have served in the military. Yet with so few serving, 99 percent live in the greatest country in the world because of the one percent.

This is the best country in the world.

“Make it Great Again” by not being the “Wurst” but striving for the best.