America: A Flagging Way of Life

For more than two hundred years, this country has risen, fallen and risen again with the direction of certain principles. We believe in freedom and will fight tooth and nail to defend it; but fighting is a state of action. Is it our state of rest that need seeing to.

We spend. We spend. We wrap ourselves in temporary comforts to the detriment of future necessity. We had means, and reveled in excess to the point of bankruptcy. We had strength, we can gain it again. We had pride, we can be proud again. What we lack and have lacked for some time is discipline.

Nothing is free. The very establishment of this once great nation was made possible by putting ourselves in the debt of older, stronger countries. We have not repaid our debts any more than we have shown any much-deserved gratitude to our debtors. Just the opposite: We have touted ourselves as the greatest country in the world and spared no breath proclaiming it. Perhaps at one point it was true, but what now?

A nation founded by immigrants has done a great deal to show resentment, fear and self-satisfied distaste for others that would do nothing less than share our once-sterling ideals. We make targets of the French, the English, the Mexican. One needn't look further than a plate of 'Freedom Fries' to see how clouded our vision has become.

We are at a crossroads. It might be a voice of denial, stating that there is still time to turn things around-- I don't honestly know. But this country may still have time to learn some much-needed humility. Otherwise we're looking at pockets filled with nothing but a staggering pile of IOUs, hungry moths and a mountain of gold-plated hubris.

This country needs help. Our finances are in a shambles and the rest of the world's markets are beginning to quake from the ambient tremors.

I offer no solutions; I have none. I merely beg that we open our minds to exterior alternatives. Swallow some pride; ask for help before we must beg. Look what it's costing us not to.

The United States still have much to offer. But in order to accomplish anything we must find new means or starve. The reality of this looms like a threatening hurricane.

Action must be taken. We must take action or watch everything we've taken for granted fall to pieces. Look without, or be without.