Having just returned from the last local Flight of Honor to Washington, D.C., for World War II veterans (which was incredible), I am reminded of Pearl Harbor and its parallel in our lives today. When the Japanese pilots returned home safely after having sunk the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor and strafed the sailors fleeing for cover, it is said that the Japanese general who planned the successful bombing, put his head down on his desk and said, “Now we have aroused the sleeping giant!”

With his victory over the U.S. Pacific fleet, he foresaw that America would abandon its policy of neutrality in the war of Europe. America would rise up in its moral and industrial might in defense of England, the last European country standing against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan.

Briefly, if the U.S. had not prevailed we would all be eating sauerkraut with chopsticks – all of our liberties and constitutional rights buried under a dictatorship.

But we know the outcome. We have enjoyed our hard-won freedom until now.

What is our Pearl Harbor now? It is internal, inside the United States of America, one nation under God. The Sleeping Giant is the moral and spiritual fabric of America. The Sleeping Giant is the American heart for liberty and justice for all under the U.S. Constitution, with inalienable rights endowed by our Creator. And the war is in the ballot box.

The Pearl Harbor attack is epitomized by the present overreach of governmental power, massive debt and the health care law. Congress has been bypassed through presidential mandates enforced by “czars.” The trillions of dollars massive debt remains unaccounted for and unsupported by the administration’s failure to pass a budget in 20 months. “We won’t know what is in it until we pass it” has turned out to be true with the health care law. Now, the courts are deliberating whether we are required to buy a product (insurance, birth control and abortion services) by the commerce clause of the Constitution. Incredible! Our liberty hangs in the balance.

Who is the Sleeping Giant? Neither Democrat nor Republican, independent or Libertarian, old or young, not one but all!

The Sleeping Giant is the American or the aspiring American citizen who shakes himself awake in the presence of crisis. We are in danger of losing our constitutional liberties to a socialist dictatorship.

This administration’s victory (passing the health care law in extra session) and incurring unsupportable debt with no budget to pay for it, has presented us with a Pearl Harbor threatening our very existence as a nation.

Wake up, Sleeping Giant! Encourage every eligible voter in your family and all acquaintances to pray and vote.

Janice 
Beavon Gravely

World War II veteran

Rocky Mount