"...and the hooome of the braaaave..."

Think of your favorite song. Can you sing all the lyrics to that song? I ask my high school students this question and some know all or most all of the words to a thousand songs. Then I give them a quiz that you can now take also. I will sing (write) the last few words of a very well known song and then you start singing the second verse. Here we go, "...and the home of the brave." So what's the second verse? I rarely find a person that knows it. Isn't it interesting that we know the words to hundreds of songs, some that we probably shouldn't know the words to, yet we don't know the second verse to a song that is probably on our "Top 5" list of most important songs. Do we even know how many total verses there are? There are three. How many know I just tried to trick you because there are four verses?

As I've mentioned before one of my goals on this cross-country bike ride is to help promote patriotism. A governmental system that had for over 200 years worked better than any in the history of the Earth, isn't working so well now. What has happened in the last few decades? We have gotten away form the basics of the Constitution and what the Founding Fathers believed. Most of us know more about our favorite TV show or sports team then we do about the Declaration of Independence. We can spew out countless statistics and trivia of our favorite athlete or actor but we have no idea what the third amendment says (got you, didn't I?).

All we need to do is spend a little time each week learning about the original documents and original words of our Founding Fathers so we can help get our country back on the right track.