What is America

America is beautiful.
America is ugly.
America is cruel.
America is kind.
America is generous.
America is selfish.
America is caring.
America is ruthless.
America is for everyone.
America is exclusive.
America is violent.
America is peaceful.
America falls.
America rises.
America is fragile.
America is resilient.
America is everything.
America is nothing.
America is all these things—because we are all these things.

We are America.

Politicians do not decide what America is.
Soldiers do not decide what America is.
Celebrities do not decide what America is.
We decide what America is.

Maybe, instead of asking What is America,
We should be asking:
Who are we?
Who do we aspire to be?
How do we act?

We make America.
We will make mistakes.
We will fail—
As individuals and as a nation.

But those things won’t define us.
We decide what America is.
We shape what it is and what it can be.

It is not represented by one person or one idea.
It is represented by all of us—united to be better.

What is America?
We are America.

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JC Glick serves as the Chief Executive Officer of The COMMIT Foundation. JC brings with him a wealth of experience as a leadership consultant and career Army officer and is driven by a deep commitment to supporting veterans in their transition journey. Since transitioning from 20 years of military service in 2015, JC has been a founder and partner of two leadership companies, where his clients included Fortune 500 companies, international non-profit organizations, government agencies, the NFL, numerous NFL and NBA teams, and multiple NCAA programs.

Over the course of his Army career, JC spent over seven years in the Ranger regiment, serving in two Ranger Battalions as well as Regimental Headquarters, participating in the Best Ranger Competition twice, and has over seven and a half years of command time with 11 operational and combat deployments to Haiti, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Afghanistan. JC is the author of two books, including A Light in the Darkness: Leadership Development for the Unknown. In 2017, he was selected as a TEDX Speaker and delivered Rethinking Leadership at TEDX Hammond. JC is also an adjunct professor at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. He holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Rhode Island and is a Liberty Fellow, part of the Aspen Institute.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.