Admit it, you watch the Superbowl more for the ads than anything else. I know, I know, the level of excellence in the two teams, striving to be the best in the country at running, tackling, passing, sacking and sweating is good too. Yet you enjoy the commercials more.

Why is that? It’s because companies spend millions for thirty seconds to make you FEEL a certain way.

You all remember the ad that stopped the Superbowl last year. Everyone stopped crunching Doritos when Paul Harvey started talking. They peered in over the kitchen counter, stopped arguing over who was the better team, and leaned in around the living room corner to see what was going on. You may have had the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A friend told me that his grandparent got teary eyed at the tribute to Farmers.

Why?

Why did everyone stop?

What was so different about that feeling that this Truck commercial built up inside of each person that they reacted so strongly?

I read an article the other day at http://www.thesocialleader.com/2014/01/are-you-an-american/ that said it very well.

Not every American can be a farmer. But every citizen can be an American — one who thinks independently, takes action when it is needed, and always takes a stand for the right.

You see, it wasn’t because that Ad was about farmers, it was because it spoke to the fiber of what we believe as Americans. It doesn’t have to be staying up all night with a newborn calf, it could be staying up late with a friend that is in need.

The idea that each person is responsible to do what they can. It’s the idea of entrepreneurship, of “If it’s to be, its up to me.”

The reason we think of Farmers as classic Americana flows from the hard determination that the Farmers of the 19th and early 20th century showed in all they did. Things have changed since the days of the Dustbowl and that independent action doesn’t always reside on the seat of a tractor or shoveling out a horse stall. There are men and women who innovate, who take initiative and accept responsibility.

The farms of a century ago didn’t purchase crop insurance, they trusted their Creator. Those of us today don’t need overbearing regulation from Washington, we need to wake up to those same emotions and actions that we were inspired by at the last Superbowl. We have to consciously make the choice to stand up, and step out.

No, it is not always easy to accept responsibility.

Yet are you really an American or do you just feel like it when Paul Harvey talks about heaving bales and clearing land?

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