The Forgotten American By Don Feder

"For the past few years, every Memorial Day, my family and I visit the Concord battlefield, a short drive from our home. It seems fitting, as it was here that Americans first fought – and fell – in the cause of liberty.

The words of Ralph Waldo Emerson never fail to move me: “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.”

“Here once the embattled farmers stood” – not the intellectuals, not the media elite, not the Congressmen or the consultants – but the yeoman farmers of New England. The British disdained them – called the “gullies,” Scottish for peasants. But they weren’t peasants; they were small landowners, who were educated (they had the Bible and Shakespeare), church-going, patriotic and ready to defend their rights to the death. In fact, those “embattled farmers” were the middle class of 18th century America. "

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