CAN WE BE ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE?

Let’s start with this premise: You have to have your own house in order before you can take on the challenges of the world. That is a premise that I was reared with. Yes, virtually all religious organizations have tenets to the obligation of mankind to look after and take care of fellow mankind. You start with family, expand to neighbor, then community… increasingly outward… but, family is number one.

The American family is not whole. We have homeless in the streets. We have the poor, the under and uneducated, the sick, the hungry and yet, we turn our backs on them and try to resolve the issues of the world. This goes against the grain of everything I know and have been taught.

We have no right to go and impart democracy on other nations. They have the right to their own forms of government and for us to presume that we have an obligation to convert them to a democratic form of government is pure and unadulterated bull. But, it seems to our government that our national mission life is to convert everyone else in the world to our way of thinking, as if we are the pure and innocent. In the same broad brush, we take on the issues of their poor, their hungry, their weak and their sick. Our motives, unfortunately, are not pure; we believe that, if we get their populace on our side, we can overthrow their governments and turn them into democracies.

Actually, that is totally imperialistic.

It occurs to me that, if our motives were pure, we would take care of our own first.

However you frame this issue, the plain simple fact is that we either do not have the resources to take care of our own people or we don’t want to. Given the fact that this nation has limited resources, given the fact that much of this nation’s technology and industrial capability has been outsourced, we have a severely limited capacity to meet the needs of the world. Certainly, it appears to me, we need to look after the needs of our own first. After that, yes, we have an obligation to use our resources to reduce hunger and poverty throughout the world.

China has an earthquake. Myanmur has a cyclone. Indonesia has a tidal wave. We do not hesitate to make it a national priority to send aid to those countries and their people; yet, we have not yet fully addressed the needs of the victims of Katrina. There are dozens of tornadoes ravishing our country and all we can say is, “Oh, those unfortunate people; their house blew away.” What’s next? Nothing.

We send millions, billions of dollars in aid to the poor of third-world nations, (much of which gets skimmed off by corrupt politicians), and we allow our Native Americans to suffer depravation, sickness, and poverty and we won’t even give that problem lip service.

Our national debt is growing at an enormous rate and we’re helping everyone else except our citizens, our people. The fundamental role of a government is to provide for the well-being and social needs of its people. We get a failing grade. How can we justify the destruction of our national economy when we do not meet the societal needs of our own?

This message does not come from a liberal clamoring for giveaways and entitlements. I am a conservative who is advocating that we need to teach and provide the leadership, economic opportunity and direction for the disadvantaged in this country to turn their lives around in order to become contributing and productive members of our American society.

We lay the lives of our American military on the line to protect our democracy and our ideals in life. On the other hand, we don’t hesitate to export our ideals in life to other countries while ignoring the people who comprise this great country. How hypocritical can we be?

That’s MY AMERICAN OPINION, respectfully submitted.