What I Learned From John Wayne

We can’t all be John Wayne – or the film star image of John Wayne – but where has our daring and dash gone? Our boldness? Our ‘I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend with my life your right to say it’ attitude? Where is that attitude that we are the best and can do anything? And then go do it? You know the one – it took us to the Moon and back several times. It saw us through two World Wars. It spread Americans from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific coast. It’s the attitude the country was built on. It’s the one Hollywood makes movies about – at least they did when they wanted to sell tickets. What happened to that attitude?
That attitude is still here. We’re still a country of risk-taking ‘cowboys’ determined to make the world a safe place for freedom loving people everywhere. That’s who we are. It’s our legacy. John Wayne is admittedly still the persona of our attitude becoming on the silver screen who we really are in our hearts. It’s his ‘can do’ attitude that lives on in all of us.
The reason most people think that ‘cowboy’ legacy is gone is because they’ve lost track of who they are and where they fit in the picture of our country’s history. They think that because we no longer ride horses we no longer have that attitude about us. The country has changed from a hundred fifty years ago when real ‘cowboys’ were driving herds or railroads across the Old West. Yet the ‘trailblazing’ is still going on. Americans are still hard-working, determined people who are leading the world in developing medicines, computers, technology, aeronautics, space research and a long list of developments setting the bar high for the rest of the world to follow. Our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and on back through our history set the stage for us to take the reins and run to new heights. They built the cities, laid the rails, put in the roads and took us to the Moon and back while making the United States the cutting edge of cultural evolution – then they handed it to us. We then went to work on faster computers, better drugs, bigger TVs, cleaner and more fuel efficient cars, airplanes that could travel half way around the world without a stop and the many more developments that have brought us to today. It’s mind-boggling to think – and impossible to imagine – where the next generation of ‘cowboys and cowgirls’ will take us.
Admittedly, there are many Americans who despise the ‘cowboy’ image of Americans – that rugged individualist who ‘takes the bull by the horns’ and gets the job done – particularly when Europeans want to hold us in disdain for whatever cause they are touting that day. Many Americans get apologetic for that image and do all they can to distance themselves from it. And maybe that’s best – for them. It will not change how Europeans or whomever the apologists are trying to appease see us, but it shows the rest of us who the apologists are. They need to ask themselves why they need to make apologies to people who are clearly trying to find ways to make themselves feel better at our expense – and in so doing are recognizing the superiority of the American ideal of who we are.
The biggest lesson we learned from John Wayne’s persona was that we are the protector of freedom. No matter what the cost to us personally, we will fight to the bloody end for our rights and those who value the same virtues and freedoms we do. We are the only ones left who will go out to stand on the front lines of freedom to protect and preserve our way of life. We’re the only ones who will risk our own lives to rush to the aid of those in distress from disasters – and we’re the only ones left to stand up against tyrannies, draw a line in the sand, look the enemy in the eye and make it clear we are making a stand right here and right now.The American ‘cowboy’ mentality is not dead, it’s not even sick. It’s in us all and it’s in the generations coming up. And it will always be here as long as we continue to value freedom and liberty and are willing to fight to keep it alive.