Fodder

Over 200 years before I was born, in the town I grew up in, there rested in a crude steeple the church bell residents had cast from sacrificed and worn farming implements. It was rung to keep the time, to remind townspeople of their obligation to God, and to summon them, at a minutes notice, to defend their shoreline and their country from foreign invaders.

The invaders did come as expected. They where fortified with modern artillery and misplaced self-righteousness. They came knowing that they would pour their authority and might throughout the land. But all they did was spill their blood into its soil. These strangers did not understand that the furnaces which cast American church bells where fed by flames of dignity and innovation.

The people of my town responded when the bell was rung, and gather they did into small bands. They fortified their strongholds with the presence of their convictions and stood against these intruders with a kind and intensity of warfare unknown to the world. Though this was only the beginning, these brave downtrodden peasants triumphed over the injustice of foreign invaders who believed that their moral convictions where superior to the very citizens of the town.

The blood of those Minutemen pumps through my veins, and my very fiber will always stand to ensure that the bell of truth rings loud and clear. I am the triumphant invaded, whose ships never sail to foreign shores unprovoked.