Friday.....America.....Melodrama Or Understatement

I can't speak for the younger generation, those who might come to be known as the O Generation, but I can speak for mine for I have lived it and reminisced with others numerous times over the past decades. The topic is America. I grew up being taught about Nathan Hale, and George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Davey Crocket. The Civil War was brother against brother but a recent trip to Gettysburg's new diorama was a little disillusioning. I was antsy during the movie narrated by Morgan Freeman as a subtle change had taken place in what tens of thousands of school children would see on their field trips. There was no question, as I grew up, on who was in the right on those bloody beaches in the pacific or bombing raids in Germany. The last scene in the Academy Award winning film Life Is Beautiful summed up how Europeans felt about America and how we perceived the efforts of our fathers and forefathers. A tank was heard rumbling in the camp where Nazi's held Italian Jewish prisoners. One last depredation was expected from the Nazi guards but as the tank turned the corner, those beautiful Stars and Stripes flew from the turret; so many sacrifices, so much courage, so much to be thankful for! I'm writing this for those who know how I feel. Where did the change begin? Was it the 1950s where we lived in new style houses and drove powerful, exciting cars that dispensed of any doubt that we were the ultimate modern man. It may have been a beginning but the 1960s, my generation, shook our foundations and cracked the columns that would not start to give way until today. Unbeknownst to us, many people got rich as they discovered that teenagers had money to spend. Others saw how many of us were going to college and there was a party of ideas ahead and it didn't matter if they were going towards truth, for the fun of it was in the going. We're the parents and grandparents today. We are responsible for the headlines in the newspaper, the textbooks that view history as valuable with a good scriptwriter and science as the cosmos gift to man. There's no going back but we can stop this slide into European socialism. Lest anyone think that pushing God out of policy deliberations is some sort of rational, sensible attempt to determine the course of our nation, we are essentially more religious than we have been for a century and a half, only the god worshipped today is us, evolved specimens that are fundamentally good and unbridled in our compassion if only we would be given full authority over those among us who rely on myths instead our own potential. We worship at the altar of reason and search for extraterrestrial life while drilling the depths of the mind for more power. Anything is acceptable but a God who created us that would have the audacity to say that we do not make our own rules. No, we are spiritual and religious. We worship ourselves. I was fortunate. God had not been expelled during my formative years. I knew what sin was, I knew I was guilty. The nuns and Christian Brothers that educated were not guarding my precious self-esteem. There were winners and losers on the playground. I had more than one yard stick across my knuckles and smile as I recount how my freshman history teacher threw all my books out of the fourth story classroom window. So where are we today, June 6, 2009? We're about to abandon what others sacrificed to attain. Oh, we'll never admit it as we hear that our fathers weren't quite as good as we have been taught, our enemies are not quite as bad, and the change is not as great and even if it is, we need to go there. We'll never hear the admission Yes, this concept has been in the works for over a hundred years, has been tried before, was an utter failure resulting in over one hundred million deaths, and yes, we had to do this surreptitiously, keeping from you our true plans and will control your life if we succeed. The latest polls show over a 60% approval rating for President Obama. I refuse to believe that this figure will hold up when Americans more fully see what is being wrought. I have written a fair amount here on how our own servicemen and servicewomen are heroes, the cream of the crop, but they are not the only heroes. The moms who home school their kids, the fathers who take their place of authority in their children's life, the members of Congress that love their country more than their pension, the young people that go against the flow of their peers. Do I sound melodramatic? If you can see what is happening to our country, it is understatement.