Why I Fight to Restore the American Republic
Given the coming New Year and ROAR’s upcoming product release, I feel it is time I explain why I fight to restore the Republic in America. I’ve written previously about what ROAR’s mission is and recently presented a brief professional memoir concerning how I came to my current philosophical outlook. However, in today’s world most people want to know more than what a person’s mission is – they want to know why  they have chosen that particular mission in life. Many, perhaps most, want to know this before they are willing to pay serious attention to their ideas. And by serious I mean taking the time to study and/or promote their ideas to others. Given that, here is the why  behind my efforts to restore the Republic in America.
 I can’t remember the exact date, but somewhere around my 10th birthday I remember having a thought flash into my mind: “I can do anything if I just take things one step at a time. I can learn anything, become anything, achieve anything…”
 Where that original idealistic spark came from I have no idea, but it has stayed with me to the present day. But over a period of years starting in my mid-20s, I learned that my youthful belief would not be possible if America continued down the path it was going. To “learn anything, become anything. . .” required living in a society where personal freedom was consistently upheld, but what America was becoming by that time was anything but that.
The first area where I became aware that something was VERY wrong with the world’s first constitutional republic was in the area of environmental policy. I learned of the millions of premature deaths caused by the banning of DDT, participated in excruciatingly absurd “cleanups” of useless ground-water bodies euphemistically designated as “aquifers,” and much, much more. Through these experiences I came to understand that something had to be done if the America I idealized as a youth was going to survive as a country and culture.
I began by self-publishing a newsletter in the early 1990s, The Free-Market Environmentalist. Subsequently, over a period of years, I came to realize that the intellectual “cancer” that had been injected into environmental policy had metastasized and spread to virtually every area of American culture to education, business, science, art, etc. And so in response to that, I extended my studies and writings to other areas of our culture in an attempt to stem the damage being done to the Republic in America.
The toll on me has been great. I have lost more battles than I’ve won, seen entire robust industries turned to shambles, and worst of all seen the agony endured by some of the most heroic beings this planet has ever produced. Heroes who fought like lions against ignorance, indifference, and outright hostility to their efforts to get the American people to wake up to the dangers we were and are facing.
Thankfully, there have also been victories and the exaltation I’ve experienced by being able to witness and understand the courage and nobility of those same heroes. And today after decades of heroic efforts by countless individuals, Americans of every class, race, and creed are increasingly realizing that principled, effective action must be taken if America is to survive and thrive in the 21st century.
These are the reasons that the spirit of my youth still burns brightly within me and why I will not rest until I live to see the Republic restored and revered in America. – Mike Gemmell, Founder and President, Restore Our American Republic, LLC.
***
(NOTE: Please see “Climate Change and the Larger Cultural Picture: Round II,” “Round III,” and “Round IV” under the “News and Views” tab for details of our upcoming product release. A link to my professional memoir is provided in: “Climate Change . . . Round IV”)
Leave a Reply