I stood humbled in the ICU as I watched my son's chest rise and fall to the rhythm of the machine keeping him alive.  I was brought to tears, but not for the reasons you'd think. 

It was too early to know if he would live or die, but each moment alive was a gain.  The ICU nurse settled me in and began a tour of my new life and home.  I marveled as she introduced me to the instruments and medicines that kept my son alive.

As she finished and left the room, my knees began to buckle at the awareness of what had led to this auspicious moment.  This moment wasn't about the accident.  This moment was about what brought us here.

Barely 500 years ago, men arrived to these shores "in a boat no larger and no more commodious than those of the ancient sea kings.  Their tools consisted of shovel, axe, hoe, and a stick plow which were only slightly improved over those of China, Egypt, Persia, and Greece[.] ... Their medicines were noxious concoctions based on superstitions rather than science."  In at least fifty centuries of mankind's presence on earth, there had been little progress until liberty was unleashed.

At one time, whether men (I use the term men in the old-school, universal, all-inclusive form) were motivated by altruism or profit, they were in an environment where they saw a need, and they were able to invent to fill it.  These inventions were keeping my son alive. 

This environment in which they worked is mostly due to the exception we call America.  For centuries, men (again, the term includes women) knew there had to be a better way to live, and in an ordained moment, they seized the opportunity. 

The men who took the chance were learned in ways we don't collectively teach in this day.  They had knowledge of civilizations dating back to the beginning.  They knew republics, democracies, tyrannies, monarchies, and theocracies.  They knew the laws of nature and the laws of morality.  They knew the evil in men's hearts, and they knew the motivators in men's hearts.

Around this knowledge they designed a government in which men could govern themselves within a moral and civil society.  This new experiment, liberty, was identified quickly as something to vigorously defend.  Those who desired to possess centralized and grand powers vehemently attacked this new idea and its supporters.

Within this liberty, men designed the laws of the road that got that ambulance to the side of the pool where my son lay, not breathing and with no heartbeat.  With donations from full wallets, the Red Cross trained my daughter in the CPR that she performed on her brother.  A man with a kite and ground glass spectacles discovered the electricity that charged the paddles that restarted, several times, the now beating heart of that lifeless body.

The plastic tubes, syringes, and pumps that were attached to that once dead boy were derived from and developed by the curiosity of men who discovered the earth's oozing black gold, petroleum. 

The endless parade of doctors who ordered medicines and tests were trained in hospitals built by men who obtained great wealth in trade and business.

The boatload of medicines that belayed further illnesses and injuries were researched and developed in laboratories paid for by the wealth of a citizenry with incomes from livelihoods to purchase prior discovered medicines.

The observant men who noticed that a cold body could recover from brutal oxygen deprivation developed a contraption that put my son "on ice" upon arrival to the E.R.  The machines that monitored the temperature and time and sedation levels he needed on that contraption were developed by engineers living in a society absent of domestic wars, credited to the defense of sovereign borders.

I was crying because everything that led to this auspicious moment had come because some men with knowledge that's available to all but obtained by few gave us a way to govern that affords men great liberty.

The greatness of America has spilled over to the entire world.  It can't be contained.  Our great developments are everywhere.  Electricity covers the earth.  Life-saving medicines infiltrate the tightest borders.  Citizens overflowing with blessings, wealth, and goodness of America's pot travel the world and help the needy on airplanes that were invented by free and competitive bicycle builders. 

The clever reader can see where I'm leading.  To give our greatness to the world, our greatness needs to be defended.  If we allow enemies of liberty to infiltrate our nation, the world suffers.  The socialist tyrants of nations even a few miles from our borders refuse to allow freedom to reign, or even enter, and the citizens there live barely better than the men who arrived here 500 years ago.  My son would have surely died there.

It's not egocentric nor xenophobic to want to protect a great thing.  It's altruism at its height.  America has always been and should always be open to those who want to participate in liberty's greatness but never open to those with schemes to destroy it, like Hillary.  Someday, the life of your child may depend upon it.

My son's life was saved by liberty.