I’ve heard a couple of propositions from
well-known people that the United States is just as much to blame for the
carnage in Boston as the perpetrators themselves. In both cases, the theory was met with a
firestorm of denial and outrage. I thought
to myself, “Those guys should be shot for sedition. How can you blame America for this horrendous
act?”
Then,
I got out of the house and took a drive around my own backyard, areas I haven’t
visited because I was “too busy” during these seven years since I moved here to
make the effort. And, it was during this
brief hiatus that I came to the realization that, indeed, we Americans ARE to
blame. My argument revolves around who
we used to be as a nation, what we became and how we now portray ourselves to
the world.
We
were a nation born of rebuke of high taxes and oppressive rule. We were a nation founded upon religious principles
with the highest of ethics, morals and standards… almost to the point of puritanism
in its most absolute forms. We went to
church on Sundays, we shunned immorality, and we were not afraid to defend any
attack on our liberties, or justice system or on our ways of life. If you murdered someone, you got hung. If you raped someone, you might get hung or
castrated or both. You didn’t have kids
out of wedlock and any thought of abortion made you sick to your stomach. Marriage was an institution and divorce was
unheard of. We emerged in the 1950’s as
a strong nation, well-respected in the international community. Those were the days when the President, Congress
and the Supreme Court recognized their roles as servants of the people, and acted accordingly.
What
we have become today would be entirely foreign and repulsive to our
forefathers. We’ve lost four wars,
(Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan). People
don’t even bother to get married; they just move in with each other and start screwing. Murder and rape garner a mere slap on the
wrist. We not only tolerate a corrupt,
power-hungry government, but we encourage it by ignoring our basic
responsibilities as citizens in a democracy.
We depict bad behavior in our various forms of entertainment and place
those who create it on a pedestal.
We
portray ourselves as being weak, immoral, self-absorbed elitists. We are well-known liars, both to our own people
and to our world allies. We are no
longer content as a nation in living a good life, we are bound and determined
to stick our collective noses into the internal affairs of other nations and we
use taxpayer money to get what we want, wherever we want. We do not display strength, but
weakness. We do not display character,
but evil. We are not good neighbors; we
are the bully on the block. We don’t see
our commitments in to the end.
The
admiration we ourselves and nations around the world once had for our country
has dissolved into disgust. We suffer from low self-esteem. We have an “I don’t care” attitude. We’re like battered women, huddling in the
darkness and waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Why WOULDN’T some radical, left-wing
extremist want to take a shot at us? There will be no
retribution. Who would WANT to be our ally? We can't be trusted.
I
have a favorite saying that applies whenever adversity strikes, whether it be in
business or a relationship. As a nation,
we need to follow it. “It’s time to get
back to our roots, the ideas and ideals upon which we were founded.” It’s time to set aside internal bickering and
self-serving politics. We need to
contemplate where we started, (as in Paragraph three). We need to reach again for those high standards
that made us a great nation.
This nation needs to return to
excellence.
To
settle for anything else is to invite further self-degradation, further
condemnation, and further attack.
That’s
MY AMERICAN OPINION, respectfully submitted.
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