Whither America?

In the 1970's there was an evocative public service advertisement on television.  It showed an old and grizzled Native American Chief with a tear rolling down his cheek as he surveyed the scaring of the landscape of this once pristine land.

On that fateful Tuesday evening two weeks past, as the results of the 2012 presidential election became painfully obvious, those of us who were blessed to immigrate to the United States in search of freedom and opportunity and were welcomed with open arms, found ourselves looking across the panorama of our adopted land with tears rolling down our cheeks.

Many of us who came to the United States did so to escape the brutal hand of government or as survivors of the consequences of tyranny run amok.

It has become difficult to watch as our adopted land appears to have chosen a path that will lead to a nation we dare not imagine.  A nation beginning to resemble what we left behind.

We have watched the Democrats and the Obama re-election machine, with the complicity of the media, cast aside any pretext of honor and integrity as they engaged in the most unethical and deceptive campaign in modern American history.   In order to maintain their grip on power, the end justified any means.   Including playing on and exacerbating the fears and foibles of the populace while promoting government, controlled by them, as the source of all salvation and survival.   The same tactics used by many of the despotic governments in those countries whence we came.

We recognize that in the White House, in the office once occupied by some of the greatest men in history, the nation has as its President a person most hostile to the founding tenets of the United States since its inception.  Mr. Obama appears more desirous of creating a cult of personality and a socialist utopia by any means possible than in acting in the best interest of all the people.

We see in Washington D.C. the spectacle of a Congress a majority of whose members are no longer responsive to the people or the Constitution but are captive to their personal whims and greed as well as allegiance to a president, a political party and statist ideology.

We have witnessed the arrogance of power as the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress forced through the Health Care Reform Act, a bill whose objective is not to improve the health care of the citizens but to expand by geometric proportions the power of the state over the individual. 

We now know this bill will be impossible to repeal, but more importantly it will pit the government against the individual, foment class warfare, create additional unemployment, shackle the economy, and exacerbate the national debt crisis while ultimately rationing health care to the most vulnerable in society

We notice that the mainstream media is no longer the watch-dog of the machinations of government but rather cheerleaders for the present administration.  The recent election was viewed not as a vital national issue but rather as a sporting event with the requisite reporting on which team would win, while all but openly cheerleading for their favored celebrity candidate, Barack Obama.

We see an economy, the engine of wealth and security, hamstrung by regulations, taxes, government policies, lawsuits and mandates, no longer able to generate jobs and income for our citizens.  American businesses can no longer compete in a new global economy and must therefore leave our shores, taking employment opportunities and wealth with them.  Small businesses and entrepreneurs will no longer be able to generate jobs or even open their doors as they too will be hobbled by this same myopic and rigid socialist ideology.

We realize, as do many of our fellow citizens, that the United States is on a collision course with national bankruptcy.  Yet the present government the nation has chosen appears determined by their policies to make certain there is little or no economic growth necessary to mitigate the future debt crises and make certain the standard of living for all Americans is maintained, much less continues to increase.  

We watch as a nation blessed with abundant natural resources refuses to responsibly exploit them, but rather become more dependent on the unreliable whims of foreign nations for energy, while willingly enriching potential adversaries.

Having lived through and experienced the near-total destruction of a continent and the loss of countless millions of lives in war and the rise of communism, I view with trepidation the deliberate downgrading of America's defense capabilities and willingness to subordinate the nation's security to other nations or international organizations.  All the while pursuing policies in the Middle East, and elsewhere that will assuredly end in armed conflict and death as the 1930's specter of appeasement has been resurrected by the Obama administration.

I know, based on personal experience, that when a nation embarks on the road to massive government and control of the day-to-day lives of its citizens, the outcome has always been detrimental to the individual.  That liberty and freedom are the first casualties, and once fully lost can never be regained short of armed conflict. 

We have been blessed to live among the most generous, outgoing and patriotic people on the face of the earth.  Some of us have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, but all of us cherish the freedom to fail or succeed; to live in a land established on the premise that our rights come from God and not man and to be part of man's most noble and crowning achievement: the founding and creation of the United States of America. 

Yet, so many of our fellow citizens, spoiled by the overwhelming prosperity of the past sixty years and ignorant of what made this nation great, are placing more and more trust in the current crop of narcissistic and power crazed politicians.  A trust, as history has repeatedly shown, that can only end in a declining standard of living and ultimately in chaos.

It has now become painfully clear to many of us that this nation must descend further into the abyss before it can potentially reverse course.  At that juncture in history, we pray America can and will do so, as there remains a near majority of the people still attuned to the tenets of the nation's founding.   On behalf of all of us over the past century who came across an ocean to seek freedom, we live in the hope that the people of the United States will not forsake their future and that of succeeding generations regardless of the adversity.

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