Clean up our own backyard before cleaning others
By Ronnie Cameron
“And now a child can understand / That this is the law of all the land, all the land / And now at last we plainly see / We’ll have a dance of Liberty, of Liberty.” – Three Dog Night.
We enjoyed a house full of children in Kemp over the Thanksgiving holiday, and at times like these, when the entire cadre converge, I think about the future my young ones will enjoy and what kind of America we will leave them. I intend to make public some of my frustrations with the United States this week, but I only do it in the spirit of love and concern. I think the nation continues to drift from the ideals which created our shining example of freedom and prosperity.
In 1945, as the dust from World War II settled, and the world looked around at the destruction caused by six years of mechanized warfare, it became obvious that only two nations remained mostly intact, with their military still operational. All things considered, the United States came out of the war with its military prowess and industrial capacity at its peak, while the rest of the world lay in ruins, except of course for Russia. Russia’s army at least survived the hell of the war, although Russian casualties, civilian and military, were a staggering 27 million.
At this point, the two remaining superpowers, the United States and Russia, bared teeth and raised hackles at each other to show dominance like two junkyard dogs. Problem is, Russia and the United States had raced to capture as many German scientists and physicists as possible, to bolster their respective arsenals. By 1960, these behemoths had garnered enough firepower in the form of nuclear weapons to destroy the world. Now their posturing took on a more menacing meaning. And as the two superpowers challenged each other, surrounding nations hurried to add nuclear weapons to their arsenals. Soon enough, upwards to a dozen nations aimed nukes at each other with many other countries pulling no strings to get one themselves.
Now I want to circle back and ask a question that will rile up a lot of people. But it needs asking. Why is it that we Americans (for the most part), have convinced ourselves that our way of life, our customs, our values, are a one size fits all, and that we should decide how other nations live?
For example, we are turning our backs on our own people while sending literally billions of dollars to Europe. Billions of dollars, in the form of currency as well as military hardware, can house the homeless. Billions of dollars can systematically end the debacle at our southern border. Billions of dollars can end hunger. The billions of dollars we send over to Europe can be better spent here within our borders.
We cry in our pillows at night just thinking of the 15,000 protesters in Iran recently detained. We cry in our pillows when we read that the Iranian government may very well execute these “innocents.” We pine to go in and spread a little democracy over there much as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet all the while, those people may not want democracy at all, especially considering the costs to their nation. They may not want democracy at all, considering the state of that shiny city on the hill these days.
We fixed things in Korea. We fixed things in Vietnam. We fixed things in Iraq twice. We fixed things in Afghanistan. Libya. Somalia, Nicaragua, Syria. Yemen. Bosnia, etc., etc.
Please don’t shoot me; I’m just the messenger. And the message I present on this first Wednesday after Thanksgiving is that, just because we’re America, that does not make us right all the time. Compare modern day pictures of downtown Detroit with downtown Baghdad. Compare Portland, Oregon with Kabul. Compare the tent cities of San Francisco with Aleppo, Syria. Compare Antifa and BLM gangs with the brownshirts of 1938 Germany. Compare our Congress with the Sicilian mafia that later exported itself to America.
Are we still the best game in town? Perhaps. But should we be spreading around our “wealth” at the expense of our own people? We can argue, “What would Jesus do?” While that is a compelling argument, it might be the very worst argument to make to Muslims as we attempt to Christianize them.
We want everyone to be happy and grill hamburgers and hot dogs in their backyard, yet all the while, our own backyard is grown up with weeds and littered with broken bottles and used syringes.