Tell you what, tw. I am a firm believer in the thought that a people get the government they deserve. Nixon, Johnson and Bush Jr. are hardly sterling examples of moral integrity or intelligent as well as just leadership. They hardly demonstrate unswerving dedication to the best interests of their country. Yet, look at how many Americans defended these men and still defend them.
Why do so many of our own people refuse to open up their eyes and look around? Why do so many take the easy way out, mouthing mindless patriotic slogans, and viewing the world with a child's simplistic, black and white construct?
People with a mindset akin to UG's are far more numerous in this nation than we would like to think. Most people who post here on the Cellar at least have given some reasoned consideration to their views (UG being a notable exception). I may completely disagree with UT 99% of the time, for example, but even I have to concede that the boy has read up on his current events and has taken the time and the effort to think his position through. I wish I could say that of the rest of our fellow countrymen with whom I happen to disagree. They don't
ALL have MBA's - hell, a lot of them barely managed to graduate from high school.
The United States today is facing not just a crisis in its government but a crisis in those who who have chosen to be so governed. We have become a people who are intellectually and morally lazy. True patriotism does not consist of a blanket endorsement of evil deeds and self-serving actions draped under the banner of the stars and stripes. We wrap our war dead in the flag and then refuse to even allow pictures of those flag draped coffins to be shown in the national media.
Things have come to such a sorry pass in this country that a man nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice can defend his record by making a statement that he "said that just to get the job" and regard this explanation as one that the rest of us will understand and consider a justified act.
The American people have become arrogant and close minded. We think that our high standard of living is because of the fact that we are "better" than everyone else. If the government does something, it must be correct because it is the AMERICAN governmnet. If we currently top the world in military might, it must be because God and the angels are on our side.
We forget that America did not invent the principles of democracy all by itself. The people who founded this country drew on the philosophies of Athens and Rome and the works of their contemporaries who were British, French and even German. The oldest democracy in the world is not the US but the Swiss Confederation which pre-dates the American Revolution by 500 years.
We tend to overlook the fact that America's abundence is due to the luck of geography and natural resources which Western Man did not get a chance to begin exploiting until a mere 4 or 5 hundred years ago. However, our resources are as finite as anyone else's. Oil is a perfect example of this and it is oil which drives US policy and actions in the world today.
America's enemy is not Iraq or Iran. It is not the Muslim world which will bring this country to its knees. The nation which may destroy us is China. China wants oil, too. Economically, China is undermining the US to an extent that we refuse to understand or even look at. China's population dwarfs our own into insignificance and China can be pragmatic about warfare and military and civilian casualties to an extent that is beyond even our own blood thirty comprehension.
China would be defanged but for one thing- the American people. We refuse to see the writng on the wall. We continue to demand the luxury of driving in SUV's - one person to a car on every crowded rush hour freeway. We continue to outsource American industry to a communist country and call it the "global free market."
The American people are badly in need of a wake up call far greater than ever 9/11 was. We need to understand that freedom is not secured by a people's unthinking sanction of global bloodletting. That a free market does not mean going down to Walmart and buying a cheap toaster made by a communist sponsored factory in a country that pays it workers a tenth of what they would make here. That a strong country is created by a strong people and strong people are created by universal access to the best education and medical care that is available - not a great education for some and a substandard one for the rest; not some children eating gourmet natural foods meals every night and others eating generic mac and cheese or going to bed hungry; not some people's pets getting $100,000 surgeries to prolong the life of a poodle by two years while human mothers on the other side of town don't even have access to adequate prenatal care.
No man is an island. The myth of America's "rugged individualism" is just that - a myth. No pioneer family made it across Indian Country alone. The thirteen colonies did not have 13 individual revolutions to secure freedom from British rule. A man who sold out his fellows to the British for his own personal gain was hanged. The men who died at the Alamo were from Kentucky and Tennessee and North Carolina - not just Texas.
Unthinking adherance to the government party line, a refusal to speak out against unjust actions, a lack of personal integrity and morality, and a refusal to budge from one's personal comfort zone makes for a country that creates Aushwitz and Bergen-Belsen- NOT the Statue of Liberty.
Our leadership is but a symptom of the people's disease.
