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WE THE PEOPLE HAVE TO FIX THIS HOUSE
     I have lived in this nation for over half a century. I have seen many things happen both good and bad. I can no longer sit idly by while degeneration occurs all around me. We citizens of this great land cannot continue to allow ourselves to be indifferent to each other and our society. America is our country, our HOME, and it is in the midst of a crisis. This crisis is of a magnitude that few of us seem to recognize. We can all feel in our hearts that the morality and code of ethics that we need to govern ourselves during the countless hours of our lives is faltering. We see the rampant abuses of people, places, and things. The American citizenry are dividing by race and class and that division is leading us all towards self-destruction. We look upon difference with uncompromising intolerance. Racial and bias crimes have become increasingly more prevalent. Our cities are unruly to say the least. There are major cities that are occupied by a largely uneducated poor population that is made up of mostly minority individuals. More educated Americans are building a more affluent “super-suburban” existence. Yet, the problems they are running away from are slowing creeping into their respective communities as well. This translates into social decay that is impacting urban, suburban, and rural communities alike. Violent acts occur so frequently that often only the more horrendous events move us to react. This violence occurs in our midst as though it is a part of civilization, and it is not. 

     The nucleus of our nation, the American family, has all but fallen apart for a majority of our population. Our value systems have become skewed. The family values and spiritual values of too many of our people are almost non-existent. There are men fathering children without concern for the wellbeing of their living, breathing creations. Parents are repeating their child-rearing experiences with their grandchildren because their single-parent offspring are overwhelmed by their responsibilities, as well as for other more unfortunate reasons that I do not feel a need to mention. There are parents who are killing their children and children who are killing their parents. There are children having children. Without the guidance they need, many of our youngest citizens have developed their own set of values based upon a child’s immature, superficial view of life. These children are turning to each other to provide the structure and support they are not getting at home. They are coming together in the form of gangs with the intent of attaining the food, shelter, clothing and other materials that support the shortsighted value system their immature minds have constructed. The rebellion of our youth is partly the result of the frustration and lack of hope that they experience when they think about themselves in some future circumstance of their lives. Within their minds, they do not see a clear path that leads them where they want to be, and it appears as though their world truly has an end. If their dream were of sleeping on a beach in Hawaii, most do not see the prospects before them that will provide that opportunity, and they doubt they will live long enough to attain it anyway. Because of poor parenting, social chaos, poverty, pollution, terrorism, war and many of our society’s other ailments they do not see a prosperous and sustainable future for themselves.

     With no sense of self-worth or value, both children (and adults) act in desperation to gain a skewed version of respect and as much short-term gratification as possible. The vast majority of the adolescents of our society, who are supposed to become leaders in our nation in the years to come when they are elders, are not arming themselves with the language skills, academic skills or social skills necessary for this task. Nor do they have the ethical, moral, or spiritual values necessary to develop positive paths. Many children have no motivation or hope of creating anything positive and unique because their vision of the future is nothing to focus on. Adults are supposed to teach the young a moral, ethical, and spiritual value system upon which to build the foundation of their character. Without a foundation for character, our children act in ways that are not true to themselves by doing what is not really in their hearts to do. Without this foundation, they are unprepared to select the proper direction for the actions of their lives. It is like placing a child in the wilderness and briefly describing their destination to them, then telling them to go find it. They would be confused because they would have no idea which direction to go in. This confusion would be overwhelming as it is multiplied by the number of choices individuals are faced with. While travel may merely be a matter of north, south, east, or west, actions are comprised of motions up, down, forward, backwards, and round within the degrees of a circle. There are numerous dangers out there, both known and unknown. Children are not armed for the journey for such dangers. What must be done in this circumstance is the same thing that must be done to prepare our offspring for their journey through life within a civilized society. We must teach them to have a sense of direction. We must provide them with a “map” that will lead them to the destination that is their future. We must arm these children with the wears they will need to survive. To insure their safety we must be there along the path of their journey through this thing called life to provide protection and guidance.  

     Our social systems are losing the order upon which they were built. Our children are either not leaving home when they become adults or they are returning numerous times for economic reasons. This increases the financial burden on the parent(s) and does little for the maturing process of the child. The cost of living in America has a high price tag, and yet, incomes are down and unemployment is up. The opportunities within the job market have become more dependent upon communication skills and intellectual ability. For those who are unprepared for this change, income levels have declined to a point where the dollars received for the work performed fall far short of what is needed to provide individual independence. Long-term employment with one company is pretty much a thing of the past. Promotions take much longer to earn, if the prospect for such exists at all. Unemployment and poverty are at an all-time high with homelessness just one or two missed paychecks away for a vast number of Americans.  

     Our economic system broke and we all suffered great financial losses as a result. To compound this problem, the economy itself is not structured so that it meets the needs of all members of our society. We can see that the policies of the corporations and the politicians are aimed at profit and control for the few, not the many. The systems that support our lives are driven by an alliance between business and government that serves those in control of resources. The control of resources gives these entities great power. Yet, truth be told, the factual power of this nation lies with the people. Our weaknesses and desires lead us to give away our power so that we can focus on self-gratification. Our government is giving away the power of the people by privatizing the management of our services and resources. This is done under the guise of efficiency. What it truly means is we will be paying for things that should be free to us all. If an entity controls access to the resources, that entity has the power to control people. Our government is supposed to be for the people and by the people. It is not supposed to delegate its responsibility for the people to the private sector because these entities are driven by profit above all else.

     Look around you and you will see that our country is physically falling apart and in need of repair. Many of the buildings in our cities are deteriorated and the residential housing there is dilapidated. Our nation’s roads and bridges must be enhanced to bare the burden of ever-increasing amounts of traffic volume and weight. We are polluting too much of our Earth’s remaining natural environment in the name of progress. Blind selfishness and greed driven by profit is leading to uncalculated destruction of our Earth’s natural resources even in the face of the knowledge that we need clean air, pure water and rich soil to survive. We are recklessly destroying the forests that help to produce the air when need to breathe and that stabilize our weather patterns. We are polluting the oceans as though we will never need them as a source of food and water. In the name of expansion and progress we have used asphalt and concrete to shield us from the barbaric practice of walking on and living on bare ground. This has lead to the elimination of huge areas of natural habitat. In addition to this, through nuclear testing and mining we have poisoned vast areas of the soil to such a degree that, not only can no edible food be grown in it, but it is also dangerous to live in proximity to such contamination. The rampant destruction of our environment is almost out of control. 

     Now add to all this the fanatical side of human behavior. There are terrorist groups made up of foreign nationals originating from outside of our border who are bent upon destroying our nation for fanatical reasons. There are terrorist groups made up of American citizens originating from within our borders who are bent upon destroying our nation for fanatical reasons. Shielded by the very liberties America was founded on, these groups strike out at innocent people as part of their skewed agendas. The list of problems plaguing our nation goes on and on. As countrymen and women of these United States, the solutions to these problems must come from we the people. We elect others to represent us in government and higher people to run our municipalities. However, the direction that this nation moves in as it goes forward must be guided by we the people. Each and every one of us is responsible for the circumstances that exist in this country. Additionally, it is the citizenry of this great land called America that must actively make right the wrongs of our living condition. This is true whether those wrongs occur within our homes, our communities, or our nation as a whole.

     We Americans are headed for a chaotic and turbulent future as the result of many things. One of which is that we have been progressively relinquishing responsibility for our individual and collective wellbeing to others. The “others” I am referring to are small groups of people with big agendas. Our political parties, civil services, social services, educators, media outlets, retailers, drug dealers and others are basically now dictating the motions of our lives to us. The rat race has caused too many of us as individuals to focus in on our own daily lives and let the rest of the world work itself out. Materialism has led us to believe that as long as we have liberty to pursue our self-serving sources of enjoyment, or more precisely put, personal stimulation, we will tolerate most anything as long as we do not feel pain. This selfish approach to living will ultimately lead to our own social chaos. This is true because selfishness is contrary to our very nature as a socialized species.  

     In essence, as a nation we have lost our way. Many members of our society have exalted both indulgence and excess to a position of esteem akin to a god. For the most part, individual and collective human behavior is out of control when judged by the standards defined for a civilized society. Many of our citizens are confused to the degree that they are unable to make any real sense of our existence or their place in it. The sheer magnitude and number of our nation's problems requires the unified effort of all Americans if we are to solve them to our collective satisfaction. In 1915, former President Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech in New York. In it, he criticized U.S. citizens who identified themselves by dual nationalities. He said, "There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism." In essence this means that if one is born on American soil or are otherwise a legal American citizen, that person is a member of this group we call nation. As such, each of us has a personal responsibility to the collective. It is plain and simple. A major obstacle to our successfully addressing the destructive issues that we face as a citizenry is our attitudes as individual Americans. We must change our way of thinking and the perspective from which our way of thinking is derived.

     Have you ever wonder why the citizens of the greatest nation in the history of humankind do not make a greater effort to correct the problems that we all face? It is because individuals get so caught up in the circumstances of their day-to-day lives that their priority becomes concern for their immediate situations. It is assumed that our government or some other entity will satisfactorily deal with correcting our societal problems. My intent here is not to say that this way of thinking is in error, but that it is too limited. We do (and should) expect our government to contribute revenue, resources and management to the betterment of our collective living condition. However, we as citizens are never absolved of our responsibilities as laid out within the Constitution. We need to open our minds and raise our level of consciousness so that we are able to understand that our personal lives are just one aspect of our being. An aspect to which we could fully devote our energies if we lived in a vacuum, but not one of us does. Because of the nature of community life and the fact that we are thinking, social beings, we must interact to survive. As well, the solutions to most of our society’s problems are an undertaking for the collective. The collective, put in more familiar terms, is we the people.

     Over the last fifty to sixty years, our society has incurred some significant changes to our collective value system. In an effort to ensure that our citizenry does not lose any liberties, our populous as a whole became more tolerant in our acceptance of degrading, vulgar, barbaric, violent behavior and the depiction of violent expression, regardless of how offensive and critical our interpretations of these things may have seemed at the time. This acceptance of negative expression, together with the misconception of the American Dream to be the pursuit of immediate self-gratification gotten through whatever means necessary, has led to a level of street violence that defames the word civilized. These acts should be characterized as domestic terrorism. At present, we do not have a common set of values shared by all our citizenry to serve as an adhesive to hold our social structure together. In the future, the American society of today could very well be looked upon as just another great civilization that no longer exists. Should this be our fate, it will truly be a travesty because of our technological and social development, and we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

copyrighted 2002
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