"AMERICA" IS VANISHING
What has happened to the nation, the people, the idea that was once identified as "America"? We have become a nation and a society of wimps. We confuse unfair advantage with strength. We mix up manliness with weaponry. We brew hatred with greed. We have squashed the American ideal. We have become more than diluted in our posture and essence, we have become violent and insensitive bullies.
One is not a hero of the "Old West" because he kills a deer from a hundred yards using a mechanized rifle with a telescopic sight. The nation is not defending what is right and altruistic by using its military power to try and force and forge nations who are unwilling to bend to our overwhelming military might. A sheriff with a tin star on his chest, trying to bring justice to an emerging civilization in the opening frontier, would be embarrassed at the actions of greedy, mechanized, military pushiness. We are not an honored sheriff anymore, America has become a brute.
In the U.S. today, greed trumps need. Sweeping materialism bests human sharing. We are not idealistic Americans filled with hope and promise, we are consumers, accumulators, demanding purchasers. Giving is only to show off what we have , not what we are. "Lock 'em up and throw away the key" is for poor and underserved people, not for corporate raiders or wealthy paraders.
Please, help us recapture what America once held, the hope and enlightenment of the world. Read Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, even Carl Sandburg. Listen to Aaron Copeland. See if it can connect with the original and miraculous America that still dwells deep inside you. Take a role in re-booting current America to focus not on military might only, but upon our role and responsibility for all Americans. Re-set America's goal higher and more genuine. In the ashes of a failed, greedy capitalism, we can re-capture and re-build what we once had: an altruistic purpose.
