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Albert Fowler was born and grew up in the mid-Maine village of Norcross and graduated from Stearns High School in Millinocket. After four years of military service, including a year in Vietnam, he attended and graduated from the University of Maine and became a public school teacher.
These times try my soul. I love my country and worry about America’s future. My heart aches for those suffering because of poor prioritization and misuse of power by America’s government. I believe America has lost its way. Leaders at every level fail to support traditional American values.
Born at the beginning of World War II, I looked up to Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower as my hero. He’s still my hero. I proudly joined him as a war veteran, both of us abhorring war.
I grew up in a mid-Maine village with a population of several dozen. Our community’s adults listened to individual and collective needs and worked together to meet those needs. The concept of people listening to each other, identifying the job, and working together to complete the desired task was solidly infused into my being. Everyone hitched up to the load and hauled in the same direction.
Today, our elected representatives: Democrats, Republicans, independents, and others should do the same. They should heed Eisenhower: “We, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.” And: “The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.”
In Millinocket, once a week, I join other patriotic citizens peacefully acclaiming American democracy. We congregate to celebrate America’s guiding principles and previous leaders who worked to bring greater freedom and opportunity to all genders, races, and ethnicities. I also honor and celebrate those I’m with each week, my public school leaders (adults and students), my military brothers and sisters, inspirational political leaders, my friends (past and present), and most importantly, my family.
We patriots also gather as worried citizens. I fear America has turned away from its foundational principles. Freedom and opportunity for all have become freedom and opportunity for the rich. The poor population remains large, and the shrinking working middle class is being asked to give more with less.
Our government’s executive branch esteems the powerful and wealthy. It vilifies the vulnerable and deprived. It has turned America’s value system upside down. For this, we gather in dissent, and we thank Eisenhower: “May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”
The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Civil Rights Act guide America. Like Americans 250 years ago, we should work to maintain a more perfect union, support justice, guarantee domestic tranquility, plan for the common defense, uphold the general welfare, and extend the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. As American citizens, we are obligated to support America’s guiding documents.
America’s current president does not lead; he decrees. A discordant and seemingly despotic wannabe king, he regularly assaults American principles and the innocent and defenseless. Many of America’s other elected representatives merely curtsy and bow. Sadly, some members of the judicial system do likewise. There are almost no checks and balances. The leadership of our country is left to America’s citizens.
In his farewell address, Eisenhower said: “Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”
America is being dictated to with fear and hate. We, the people, are left to be America’s leadership, guiding America to be a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect, once again, as Eisenhower wished for the entire world community.
Please honor Eisenhower’s advice and support traditional American values. Be a leader for America and steer our country in the right direction. Lead by participating in a Maine No Kings rally on March 28.