Today, I cannot love my country, not against the background noise of gunfire and the cries of children.

                  LITTLE BOYS and girls skip down the street to elementary school, or step off big yellow buses or pile out of mommy vans, lunch boxes. Teen-agers pull into the high school parking lot, compare cars, high-five, check their phones.

            They walk into school, smiling, laughing. Then, they die. They suffer horrible physical wounds. They suffer wounds of the mind that will have them waking in the night, screaming, decades later.

            Parishioners kneel to pray and die. A shopper picks up a loaf of bread at Walmart and dies. Others bleed, others cry. At a concert, the music is cut short by bullets and screams. 

It happened again, yesterday. No doubt, it will happen again on some tomorrow.

            It will go on and on because a nation does nothing. Nothing at all. Except offer up thoughts and prayers, all the while making more and more guns, more and more ammo and living under a sick and twisted definition of “manhood” that somehow makes being armed and dangerous a good thing.

            What is a nation? In the end it must be more than what the dictionary says if it is to have purpose. It cannot just be people bound together by geography and a government.

            THE NATION I dream of is one bound together by compassion and peace, by caring beyond self. It is a nation where a real man is measured by his kindness, not the size of his gun. It is a nation where a real man is measured by his compassion, not by his list of who he hates and fears.

            It is a nation where we walk our streets in peace with smiles and comfort and wave at our neighbors; a nation where our ills, miseries and pains are not self-inflicted. It is a nation that looks at a wrong and rights it in a selfless way. It is a nation that stands as an example of peace, prosperity, and lives as a place where everyone within it can pursue their dreams, not hide away from their fears.

            We are not such a nation. No matter how much I hold it in my dreams, we are not even close to that. We cannot be a “great” nation so long as we live our lives against the background noise of gun shots and the cries of children. We cannot even be a good nation so long as we accept the deaths of the innocent as normal and not worth our time.

            Today, I sit amid plenty, all of it made possible because of this nation. Yet, I sit here today without love for my nation. I sit here, frankly, without even liking it much. I no longer can like the finery, the gifts it has given me as long as it – we – tolerates taking the most precious gift of all – life – from others.

            I cannot love a country that values profit over compassion and lives in fear rather than with hope. When this nation finally does what other civilized nations have done and ends the black death of guns violence and the outdated myths of “manhood”, maybe then I can fall back in love.

            But not today.

                  Rich Heiland is a retired journalist and semi-retired consultant, trainer and public speaker. During his journalism career he was a reporter, editor, publisher, college instructor, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year honoree. He also writes the intodementia.com blog about his family’s experience with dementia. He lives in West Chester, PA and can be reached at [email protected].