Tag: canterbury

Homesick

Since my birthday on the 21st November, I have become quite homesick. I had a great day; I went out to eat with my wife, and then we went and watched the new James Bond movie. While watching Skyfall I got to see areas of London which I recognized, and I started to feel the pangs of feeling homesick and missing sites that I was familiar with. England might not be the freest country in the world, but it is certainly not a dictatorship. England has given the world many modern conveniences and freedoms. The Magna Carta was used heavily in the formation of the US constitution, and British scientists continue to push the world forward in human discoveries.

I was born and raised in a small city called Canterbury; a city made famous by its ancient cathedral and by Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘the Canterbury Tales’. It is very much a tourist city, with education at its heart; it has three universities.

Canterbury (Listeni/ˈkæntərˌbɜri/ or /ˈkæntərˌbɛri/)[1] is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour.

Originally a Brythonic settlement called *Durou̯ernon (composed of the ancient British roots *duro- “stronghold”, *u̯erno- “alder tree”), it was renamed Durovernum Cantiacorum by the Roman conquerors in the 1st century AD. After it became the chief Jutish settlement, it gained its English name Canterbury, itself derived from the Old English Cantwareburh (“Kent people’s stronghold”). After the Kingdom of Kent’s conversion to Christianity in 597, St Augustine founded an episcopal see in the city and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, a position that now heads the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion (though the modern-day Province of Canterbury covers the entire south of England). Thomas Becket’s murder at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 led to the cathedral becoming a place of pilgrimage for Christians worldwide. This pilgrimage provided the theme for Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th-century literary classic The Canterbury Tales. The literary heritage continued with the birth of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in the city in the 16th century.

Parts of the city have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many historical structures remain, including a city wall founded in Roman times and rebuilt in the 14th century, the ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey and a Norman castle, and perhaps the oldest school in England, The King’s School. Modern additions include the University of Kent, Canterbury Christ Church University, the University College for the Creative Arts, the Marlowe Theatre, and the St Lawrence Ground, home to Kent County Cricket Club. The city lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a local government district.

Canterbury is a popular tourist destination: consistently one of the most-visited cities in the United Kingdom,[2] the city’s economy is heavily reliant upon tourism. There is also a substantial student population, brought about by the presence of three universities. Canterbury is, however, a relatively small city, when compared with other British cities.

I was born in Canterbury, and went to schools in the city growing up. I attended St Stevens Infant and Junior schools (protestant Christian schools) as a young boy, and attended Canterbury High school through my teenage years. My parent’s philosophy is to live and let live, and to be considerate of others. I was quite shy growing up, but I loved my home town and was very proud of my British heritage. My family goes back hundreds of years, and I am from English heritage as far back as records go. I recently found out through my uncle on my last visit that one of my great great great grand mother’s was Irish, and that her husband brought her back to England. As far as I am aware, my family has always lived in the south east of England.

My home country is very much steeped in tradition, and the ideals of being ‘proper’ are very prominent. English people for the most part live very structured lives, and when I met my wife, I very rebelliously found out that things didn’t have to be that way. In America you can be anything that you want to be. But now as I mature into adult life, I realize that structure is important. I see so many Americans working all hours of the day chasing their tails and not fully experiencing life itself. Sure they might have a big house and a fancy car, but they never have time to fully enjoy it. I look at the Universities and realize I could never go to them through the shear costs. Now that I am fast approaching my later twenties, and the talk of children continues to come up between my wife and I (both our younger sisters now have children) I wonder what kind of life they will be able to have in this country. The land of opportunity seems to be consuming itself, and has become more divided than ever. England has been through its share of ups and downs, and appears to be resilient to the tides of change. America I fear, will not be able to cope with the changes that it now faces.

I want to live in a free world, where anyone can be what they want to be. I do not want some over authoritarian government watching my every move and telling me what I can and cannot do.

I lived within Canterbury’s city limits until age 9 when my parents moved us to a small village called ‘Sturry’ which was right on the outskirts of the city. It was a short 4 mile hike to the center of Canterbury, but we had a house that overlooked a field, and it felt very rural. Sturry is where my mum’s family have lived for over a hundred years, and the village itself is steeped in history.

Human habitation in Sturry is thought to have started around 430,000 years ago, as dated flint implements – namely knives and arrow-tips – show. Other signs of early human activities include a collection of axes and pottery shards from the Bronze Age and more pottery from the Sturry Hill gravel-pits, and a burial-ground near Stonerocks Farm showed that there was an Iron Age settlement of Belgic Celts (who gave Canterbury its pre-Roman name of Durovemum) from the end of the 2nd Century BC. All this evidence indicates that human habitation of some kind existed on the north bank of the River Stour, on Sturry’s site, for hundreds and thousands of years. When the Romans arrived, they built Island Road (the A28) to connect Canterbury, the local tribal capital, with the ferry to the Isle of Thanet, with a branch to their fort at Reculver.

The most important era for Sturry, determining its future shape, size, function and name, was that part of the early 5th century when the beleaguered Romano-Britons brought in Frisians and Jutes as mercenaries to help them fight against invading Picts and Scots, and rewarded them with land. Some of them settled near Sturry: their cemetery was found at Hersden. Then in the mid 5 Century, Kent was re-organised into lathes, or districts. Sturry was the first; Stour-gau, meaning district or lathe on the Stour. The lathe was bounded by the Stour as far as Canterbury in the North by the sea, and farther south as distant as Wye.

The remains of a large village water mill lie near the parish church, and the High Street retains some charming historic buildings. The village virtually adjoins one of the smallest towns in England, Fordwich, where there are further interesting buildings, including the historic Town Hall. Fordwich itself is smaller in size than Sturry. A rare survival, a small granary, constructed with wooden weather-boards is located at Blaxland Farm and has nine staddle stones supporting it. A barn from Vale Farm, Calcott has been re-erected at the Museum of Kent Life, Sandling. A 16th Century manor house and oasthouse, built in 1583 and which belonged to St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury still stand in Sturry village beside the medieval tithe barn – although they have all been incorporated into the King School after they were sold by the widow of Lord Milner in 1925.

Since the 1960s a large number of satellite housing estates have been built on the north side of the village, mostly in former woodland, which have turned Sturry into one of the major dormitary villages for Canterbury. Nonetheless, the village is still overwhelmingly rural, with fields for arable farming and livestock grazing, and large amounts of coppice woodland. A number of market gardens can also be found in the countryside around the village. Large and deep quarries are still worked on the edge of the village, with the old workings flooded to provide recreational lakes used primarily for fishing.

During the Second World War, Sturry was one of the most badly bombed villages in England, the greater part of the High Street being destroyed by a parachute mine in 1941 during the Baedeker Blitz, killing 15 people of which 7 were children aged 12 and under.[1] One of these was a little girl who had been to the bakers’ and whose body was recovered still clutching the bag of buns she had bought.[2] The same aircraft dropped another bomb, but this landed amongst the allotments. In the book, Letters to Sturry, it is recorded that on Wednesday, 28 August 1940, there were eight separate air raid warnings and on ‘Battle of Britain Day’, 15 September 1940, a German Dornier bomber plane, (Aircraft 2651, 3rd Staffel, Kampfgeschwader 76), crash-landed in a field below Kemberland Wood near the Sarre Penne stream. Three of the five crew were killed and were firstly buried in Sturry Cemetery but then re-interred in the late 1960s into the German war cemetery at Cannock Chase.

Nonetheless a number of interesting buildings remain intact in Sturry, including St Nicholas parish church, which is predominantly Norman in style, with the oldest parts dating to about 1200. The Manor House, built in 1583, is now the junior school of The King’s School, Canterbury.

My grandmother survived the bombing of Sturry and her oldest brother has many stories to tell of German planes flying over head during the war. While England may be more progressive and socialist than in previous decades, it is still very much a capitalist society, and thrives off innovation and technologies. It should be no surprise then that I get very unnerved when I hear people supporting wars in the middle east, and check points at highways in the US. I find this to be fascism 101 and it is something which makes older generations shudder, especially my grandparents. My grandfather still remembers a V2 rocket flying alongside his fathers car while they were driving home one day, and pulling off onto the side of the road, waiting for the bomb to drop in the distance and explode.

I am feeling very homesick right now because I know that Britain will shake off the stupidity of socialism in good time, and will continue to educate its populace in the traditions of old, while teaching the importance of the sciences, math and good English. I fear that America in reaction to socialism from the left, will careen hard to the right and pick up the same failed philosophies of Adolf Hitler during the 1930’s in response to communism.

I don’t particularly consider myself a patriot of either nation, at least not in the traditional statist sense. I don’t blindly support the flag of either nation, but I am very proud of each nation’s history. I love my British heritage, and I love the constitution and values of my adopted nation.

I simply want to live in a free world, and self determine what is best for me. I want to make my own living, and not have others tell me what I can and cannot do. So long as we don’t go out of our way to hurt others, why should we be stopped from acting off our own accord?

I am beginning to care less and less about politics, it is simply a means to an end. The US is rife with corrupt politicians, and the only way to fix that is to learn about it, flush out the bad ones by replacing them, and find all the goodness that you can within yourself. Actions speak louder than words. It is not so much what you believe in that counts, it is the way that you treat others.

It is far more important to live well, educate yourself, and provide a good example than to simply point out others and call them stupid. We teach our kids by setting a good example, so why shouldn’t we live and talk to others in such a manner?

A home is created on values, and by gritting our teeth through the hard times. We must never forget our history, and we must always learn from the mistakes of the past. The world will be a much better place if we can learn to be happy and advance ourselves and enjoy life to the best degree possible, even if the rest of the world is falling apart. The world is built and rebuilt by those who look toward the future. It is up to each of us as individuals to make it a good one.

Time goes by so slowly

Actually, most of the time it doesn’t go by slowly at all.

Last week I put in about 55 hours at my day job, after having shot a wedding the previous weekend. During the middle of the week my second nephew was born, and though I had more sleep than the rest of the family, there were a couple of nights where I only got a couple of hours. Thursday I went to a Tea Party rally where the vice president for research at the FED in Cleveland gave a speech, and I took notes (an article to follow!) and Saturday was filled with errands.

Yesterday however I did get some rest. After my wife and I woke up and had breakfast, she went to work and I took an hour to sit outside and drink my coffee and just enjoy the cool early autumn air. I reflected on life, the past week, and our plans for the future.

If the world doesn’t blow itself up by the end of the year, and this country doesn’t declare martial law and become a complete police state, I would like to have kids of my own. I now have two nephews, one from my sister and one now from my sister in law. Both boys are healthy and strong of mind. One is only 5 days old, and the other is 2 1/2 years old.

I get into battles on this blog, and I express my viewpoints so that there might be a future for them. It’s what any good uncle or citizen would do. I’m more afraid of them growing up into a life of servitude than the iron fist of the state coming after me.

If we (as a nation or as the world) can get through the next few months, and if we can begin getting back on track, I would like children of my own. Life is going well for my wife and I right now, but there will never be a perfect time to have kids. There will always be troubles in the world. My grandparents grew up during the second world war and witnessed bombs fall on their neighbors houses while Canterbury burned in the distance. My grandparents and their generation went through a lot growing up, and yet they turned out to be one of the strongest generations out there.

Time very rarely goes by slowly, but every once in a while you get to enjoy a few slow moments. Life speeds up as you go along so it’s important to enjoy it while it lasts!

Why we fight

I have nothing to gain from these posts except a chance at a future.

There are periods in history where the individual must stand up and fight, or perish with the collective. We are currently living in such a time.

I do not relish the idea of pounding out an article each day. Well; not every day. There are days, as in recently that I’d rather just wake up, take a shower, make a pot of coffee, cook breakfast and take the dog for a walk, and not think about anything but the fresh morning smell and the sun rising.

The reason I study politics and philosophy is because politics affects my life whether I like it or not, and philosophy is the key to unlocking the potential to change the status quo and deal with life in general.

In a political sense, I do not fall into the left/right paradigm. It makes no sense to me, and I only take part in it when there is advancement to be gained toward liberty and economic freedom.

With the current presidential contenders from the democrats and republicans there is a dead heat. They are both as bad as each other. I don’t buy the idea that Barack Obama is an undercover Marxist Muslim here to drive the country back into the stone age. Equally I wouldn’t call Mitt Romney a great businessman, or our lord and savior. At best, these two clowns are puppets who will do whatever their financial backers tell them to. Almost all of those in power have been bought and paid for, and it does not matter if they are all Marxists in disguise or if they are fascists only interested in a quick buck. They are all bad, and they need to go.

I’m not interested in term limits, because there are good congressmen out there such as Ron Paul who have served well for over two decades. Term limits would only give the wrong-doers a tighter time frame to commit their evil acts.

Our problems are far deeper than ‘the economy’, ‘benefits’, ‘medicare/medicaid’ and all the other ‘issues’ that have been trumped up by the past administrations and played like a pied piper for all of us to debate about fruitlessly and endlessly.

The United States has the most advanced document that enshrines human freedom ever conceived by human intelligence. The protection of this document and the enforcement of it by its citizens is paramount to the survival of this country and to the world.

Before the US constitution there was the Magna Carta, a document which was signed in my very own home town of Canterbury, England. For me; freedom and the ability to say and do as you please runs deep.

If we do not restrict the power of government from both sides of the US political isle soon, we will lose the ability to do so entirely.

For my generation, it really is liberty or death. We are not much interested in all the other ‘issues’. On our current path; which is nearing hyperinflation; we know that the economy will fail. We can deal with that, we can rebuild that. But if we lose freedom now, we will never again see it in our lifetime. Economies boom and bust, but can be rebuilt. But can a country which has lost its moral compass return to freedom so quickly? I doubt it.

No one in my age group who I have spoken to seriously about politics is going to vote for Romney or Obama. They are all Ron Paul supporters. We will all be voting for Gary Johnson in this election period, in support of the same ideals. If you are serious about defending liberty, and providing a chance at a future for my generation, I suggest you do the same.

It does not matter if we win the election or not. Mitt Romney is not going to beat Barack Obama. Romney is too stiff, too out of touch, and his rejection of the young and grassroots movements has already cost him the election.

Can we survive another four years of Obama? That is uncertain. Can we afford not to make a difference in this election? No. We must make a difference. The more people vote libertarian, the bigger the message will be to Washington to change its ways. Who knows, we might even win.

Freedom is not won overnight. It takes many battles, many of which will be lost, but over time the message will spread and the war will be won. But it is up to the individuals to stand up and make a difference. And that is why we fight.

Jet lag

It’s 3am UK time. I am wide awake. It seems that my body clock has been spun completely off-center. It’s funny, I always used to sleep fairly well on my return trips to England when living here, but now that I am more of a visitor than a resident, my body can’t seem to adjust, at least not yet anyway.

Today Brooke and I will be heading up to London on the train to see The Phantom of the Opera. There are three things that I wanted to do with Brooke on her first visit to the UK, which I didn’t get a chance to do last time. One was to eat at the Punch Tavern, which we did yesterday. The second was to go to a theatre production in London, which we’re doing today. And thirdly to head to Paris for a day or two, which we’re planning on doing next week before we leave.

Whenever I used to travel to the US; I used to compare prices between products and services in the Canterbury area, and in the Cincinnati area. Now, after having lived in the US for 4 1/2 years I find myself doing the same in reverse. What I remembered is the high cost of housing and petrol/gasoline, but what surprised me was the day to day cost of food, clothes and various home products. I remember thinking how cheap everything was in the US when I used to visit, but lately it seems that everything is so expensive. It is true, many items have gone up in price in the US, inflation it seems, is far higher than you’ll hear about in the media.

I can see now why both the UK and US governments behave the way that they do when it comes toward oil and gasoline/petrol. The UK has made it practice to restrict its citizens usage of the resource since it needs to import more of it. Whereas the US economy is built off cheap oil, and the US government builds its blunderous foreign policy off retaining its dominance on the purchase of cheap oil. Of course, both governments are wrong in their policies, since there are alternative energy resources readily and cheaply available. But it does explain why prices and inflation are higher than ever, and why energy prices are so high.

I was amazed at the cost of a meal at the Punch Tavern; £5.79 for a meal with a pint of beer. That’s amazing! Brooke and I would easily drop $40 – $50 for the same meal each back home, and yet my dad only paid about £22 for himself, my mum, Brooke and I.

On recollection. There really isn’t a ‘better place’ to live in the world, your home is where you make it, and what you enjoy out of it. Sure, there are better places, and I enjoy the 28C/86F warm sunny weather back home in Cincinnati compared to the 9C/50F cloudy drizzly weather in Canterbury right now. But the walk that Brooke and I took yesterday evening along the back woods where I used to jog as a teenager were so quite and so peaceful. The wooded areas were full of bluebells, something that I’ve wanted to show Brooke since I first met her. And the fields were quiet and rolling. There wasn’t a sound in the air, except a few rumbles of cars in the distance and the chirp of birds in the air.

I think life is meant to be lived, and it doesn’t matter where you are, nor too much what you’re doing. But how you’re doing it, what you’re doing it for, and whether you’re enjoying it or not. Life really is too short. I grew up in this country, I’ve lived here 4/5 of my life, and yet I feel more like a stranger now than anything, even though I am used to the customs and find myself easily able to blend in and get around.

I’ve grown up a lot since I left England. America is the land of opportunity, though not all Americans, perhaps even the majority don’t use the opportunity. I think England has as many opportunities as America, but perhaps not in the same context. You can get a good education in England far cheaper than in the states, but to buy a place to live here in Canterbury you’d need to be practically a millionaire, whereas in Cincinnati they’ll pretty much give you any mortgage you want, and you can buy a house for not much more than a car in certain places.

I feel bigger now than when I left England, bigger in mind body and soul. I left the old country with many ideas, expectations and dreams. I have achieved many of them, and am proud of myself for doing them. I owe all my successes in life to my wife and my parents, without their support, I doubt I would have achieved half of them. It makes me very happy to be spending the next week and a half with all of them in the place where I grew up. I shall make the most of this, and enjoy eating my favorite meals and seeing old sights, friends and family.

Now to try and grab a couple extra hours sleep, so that I don’t feel like a zombie while walking around London!

Who the heck are you?

So by now you may be wondering who I am.

My name is Paul Townsend.

I was born in Canterbury England. I had a fairly normal upbringing, and had a reasonably good education at English schools.

Aside from dirt jumping with my friends, and reading such books as ‘rich dad poor dad’. I was fairly normal for my age.

When I turned 16 I started playing an online game called ‘Star Wars Galaxies’, which was an MMORPG game similar to World of Warcraft, except the universe of the game was based on Star Wars.

On this game I met a girl whom I fell in love with. First we just started to talk and do missions together on the game. Eventually we were talking on yahoo chat outside the game, and then on a ventrilo server via headsets. Over the months of 2004 our relationship blossomed from a good friendship to an online romance. By fall I had decided that I wanted to go and see her.

There was only one problem…I was living in England, and she was living 4000 miles away in another continent. Cincinnati Ohio, was a fair distance away, no matter what age you are. And so, with my determination in mind to go and see her, her mother got on this star wars game and started talking to me, to suss out whether I really was a nice young English boy, or some creepy pedophile lurking behind a computer screen in some dank basement.

After realizing that I was who I said I was, she invited me over for Christmas that year, on the condition that I stay in the local motel down the road from them. I agreed, and so that Christmas, I took my very first flight from London to Chicago, and then on down to Cincinnati.

From the moment I set foot in America, I fell in love with it. Everything was well spaced out and clean. Everyone drove on the right side of the road, and it felt like a parallel universe compared to England, because everyone spoke the same language and behaved similarly, but to me, the people seemed nicer and more respectful, and I was very impressed by it.

When I was getting off the plane in Cincinnati, I caught a glimpse of my ‘online girlfriend’, standing next to her mother, and I felt a pinch of excitement as I headed down the walkway towards them.

When I saw Brooke for the first time, my heart just melted inside, she was perfect in every way.

I could write a novel about our romance from that point on. To put it into a short form. We began dating at that point, and I would fly out every summer and every Christmas for the next three years. Eventually after my ninth visit to the US, we went to see an immigration attorney to see about me moving to the US in the following year. He told us that if we got married, I could stay without having to leave and that within a year I could get a green-card. And so, that is what we did. I stayed in the US, and we married in February of 2008, four years after first meeting each other online.

My wife and I now live very happily together in the suburbs outside of Cincinnati. Again, I won’t go into too much detail, as I like my privacy. But just know that we are very happy together, and yes, it is a true love story.

On Friday I became a US citizen. It was a choice I made because of my love for this country, and because I always want to stay with my wife, without all the updates of paperwork that go with a green-card.

Over my four years living in the US, I have paid attention to the political process, as I am an avid historian, and I like to learn about how ideas affect reality.

I know that George W Bush was not a popular president, and I paid attention to the election process as Barack Obama became president. I felt at that point, that the country had changed, and was not on the right path. Imagine that…someone from another country, sensing that something was out of place. I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I continued to watch the news, and stay informed, as most people do.

I was amazed when I discovered Glenn Beck. And at this point I must point out, as I said, I love history, and I am an objectivist at heart. If you have a point to prove, I will gladly listen as you display the facts, and then do my own research to discover whether I believe your point of view or not. I am not a republican or a democrat. I was neither liberal, socialist (Labour) nor conservative while living in England, and to be honest I was rather young at the time. No, I came here with a clean slate, with open eyes, a honest heart, and the future ahead of me. I do not hold any major political convictions to one party or another.

What I do hold to though; is freedom. When I stepped off that plane in Chicago, what I sensed (and yes I realize I’m saying Chicago…I know about the corruption there now) was freedom.

When I was sitting in the passenger seat with my girlfriend for the first time in late 2004, her mother driving us from the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati airport, I felt free. Not just in love, but free. As we were driving down I-75 north, we rounded the hill, and the lights of Cincinnati burst into view. ‘This is what America is all about’ I thought to myself. ‘This is why people love to come here’. Everything was so big and bustling, everyone seemed to be so laid back and enjoying life.

Perhaps I was just lovestruck, perhaps I was seeing it in a romanticized light, but the sense I got from the people around me, shook me in a profound way.

I had decided at that point that eventually I would marry the girl beside me and live here some day.

And so back to Glenn Beck. What a character! I’ve never in my life seen someone on TV talk so harshly about politicians in such a serious and profound way. What really got me hooked on watching Glenn, was when he took a fish, (live on television!) gutted it, pulled the skeleton out of it and said ‘this is what the politicians in Washington are lacking…a spine!’. Wow! I couldn’t believe it, I was awestruck and beaming at the same time. I don’t care what country you live in, it takes balls to do something like that…to stand up to the establishment in such a profound way.

Like I said, I’m not some left wing or right wing nut. I was simply watching the news and settling into married life in the States with my wife. I watched the news because I like to stay informed about the world around me.

My wife is an avid photographer, and when the first Tea Party protests started, we headed down to the local one in Cincinnati to take pictures. I talked with an old guy who was sitting at one of the coffee shops down there, and he pretty much told me his life story. ‘Son, get yourself an education, and don’t let the government tell you what to do’. He bought me a coffee, and we had a pleasant conversation for about half an hour. When the march began to city hall, I said goodbye, and my wife and I followed the crowd, taking pictures along the way. I loved seeing the crowd in action. Everyone was cheerful in nature, and were protesting excess spending and special interests, and I liked seeing freedom of speech and protest in action.

By the next protest a month later, my in-laws had joined the local tea party, and from time to time, I would accept my father-in-laws invitation to attend one of the events. I would sit down and listen to what they had to say. But I made a point to never take part, as I was not an american citizen, and I did not feel it my place to say anything at that point. For the time being, I was simply an observer, watching what Americans do best.

For the next couple of years, I continued to observe the direction the country was heading in, and was deeply disturbed by the Obama administration’s passing of laws and bills which I felt violated the Constitution. By this point I had studied a great deal of American history, and felt I knew about as much as any normal American, if not more.

I continued to watch Glenn Beck, up until he canceled his show, and by that point I was researching the history of political candidates and global corruption. I no longer felt that Global warming was real, and I was greatly disturbed by all the ‘lies’ that were circulating the world.

As I said, I was still not an American citizen, and so I did not rock the boat, or discuss any of my findings in public. Aside from conversations with my wife and father-in-law, I mostly kept my opinions to myself. I was simply a resident, reading up on articles, and finding deeper truths to the world.

On Friday I became an American citizen. Like I said, I did so of my own accord, because I feel I share the same values as this country was founded upon, and I wish to live out my life with my wife by my side, in this great land of opportunity.

And now as a citizen, it is my duty to protect this country, from enemies foreign and domestic.

I will use the knowledge I have gained, to spread the truth, to help inform those around me, and to promote peace and freedom in the world.

I am Paul Townsend, and I love Freedom.