During my second tour of duty in England with the US Air Force, I spent a lot of time in Germany and on the European continent because I was on the HQ USAFE Inspector General’s team. While in Germany I saw both the evidence of destruction from the British and American Bombing Campaigns during WW2 and the work that was done by the Allied Forces and German citizens to rebuild Germany after the war.

The Berlin Wall memorial, which incorporates sections of the actual wall, at Ramstein Air Base was significant to me because when I was first commissioned as a Chaplain Candidate, Second Lieutenant on 15 April 1985, the Wall was still up and the world was in the midst of the Cold War.

During my time in uniform we used to have Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) Warfare training. It was then that I truly learned that while you could possibly shelter and survive a Biological or Chemical attack, the chances of surviving a nuclear attack weren’t very good. That’s why the scenario was called Mutually Assured Destruction!

I came to truly believe and understand that the path of destruction we were on as a nation and world was obscene. So why am I writing about this now? Why on the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence? It is because I see the US trying to destroy the very organisations that were established to prevent such a scenario. Additionally, there is so much harmful and hateful rhetoric being spewed by politicians and by the christian nationalist movement that is counter to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Yes, the Constitution was and remains a flawed document. Amendments through the years have tried to correct those flaws. Birthright citizenship, the abolition of slavery, voting rights for African Americans who had formerly been enslaved, the right of Women to vote, and the prohibition of poll taxes are some of those changes. Sadly, many of the hard-fought rights that have been enshrined in the Constitutional Amendments and through law (like the Civil Rights Act) are under attack. The attacks are coming from the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the Federal Government and from individuals and groups at the national, state, and local levels.

Yes, the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is complicated to say the very least. When I see the slow destruction of the Constitution which I swore to support and defend in my Oath of Commissioning to support and defend for the first time in 1985 and continued to do so during my 26 years in uniform. I believe that it is my duty and responsibility to continue to do so as a retired military chaplain, and it deeply saddens me to see what is going on today. We can do so much better than this as a nation.

So what do I do? As a dear friend of mine once said, I try to make a difference in my own little part of the world. Will you join with me in this effort, dear reader? My prayer is that the majority of the people in this country will do the same. So help us God.