The United States of America has always thrived on challenges. Things like the Space Race and the American Revolution have brought us through trying times and we have come out victorious. But America now faces it's biggest challenge yet. It is not an outside struggle or a foreign war we need to worry about. It is the war fighting within our own borders: the battles we rage against each other. Fear and terror are all too real. Whether an atrocity is committed by an outsider or by one of our own citizens, people we thought we knew and thought we could trust, it is still a horror against our country. When a person is killed prematurely or many people are slaughtered during one event, we know we have done something wrong. But we must pick ourselves back up again! And that is what we have trouble doing.
When the Boston Marathon Incident occurred, nobody knew what had happened or who did it. What is important is that we do not point fingers at the wrong people and that we stay strong and UNITED. We must show whoever did this that we are made of courage and strength, and that we will not cower and shake before them, whoever they are! We must remember those that have suffered and bled and died for us to realize that we are one nation and that we share losses as much as we share love. We should let those people give us strength to lean on and leap off of to facing threats like 9/11 or even internal cases, made by familiar people.
When we first formed, nearly 300 years ago, we were meant to be a nation of strength and justice. But our fear is making us blind, and from that fear comes our weakness. Next time an atrocity happens- and as much as we pray it won't, we know better- grieve with those deeply affected. Praise the heroes who took action. Show them that they have the entire strength of a nation behind them.
And then together, we will be, truly and wholly, united.