Are America's best days behind it?

There are many people today who disseminate gloom and doom about the future of the United States. I can't say as I blame them.

We live in a country today where lies are distributed as truth by people such as Karl Rove. We are under surveillance by our own government in the name of security and safety. We are told that people who are opposed to such tactics surely have something to hide. Our government is viewed by most intelligent people around the world as the power hungry bully who is shaking down smaller nations for their lunch money of oil and land for military bases. Is it any wonder that so many of us have felt ill at ease about this country.

What are we to make of an administration that believes the health of the nation should be gauged by the richest of the population? They believe America is great because we have more millionaires than any other country. They think might makes right. They are under the misguided logic that this would be a better world if every other land mass followed the American model. But would it?

I believe the health of this nation is in peril. We are slowly dying of a disease that has destroyed world powers since the beginning of written history. Rome, Egypt, Greece, England, Germany - mighty empires that assumed they would control the world and remake it in their own image only to collapse under the weight of their own arrogance and aspirations. I judge the health of our nation by the poorest of the populace. It doesn't matter how rich we are on the outside, it is the suffering of the disenfranchised on the inside that should be our gauge.

By now, you may be thinking that I am simply another purveyor of gloom and doom. To the contrary - I believe in the people of this country to turn it around. I am hopeful - even in the face of the tribulations forced upon us by men who are more interested in amassing wealth than aiding their fellow man. I find hope in watching children play in the park. I see hope in the eyes of volunteers who sacrifice their personal time to help their fellow man. I hear hope in the laughter of my children. I feel hope in the very fiber of human existence.

If I was resigned to the notion that our country is on an unstoppable path to destruction, I couldn't possibly bring myself to write this blog. let alone continue to be active in the peace movement. What would be the point?

But with hope comes courage of conviction. I am convinced that the actions of peace and liberty loving activists from coast-to-coast will eventually prevail and the deaf ears and blind eyes of an apathetic nation will be healed - and along with them, this cancerous tumor of imperialism will suddenly vanish into remission.

Are America's best days behind it? Not as long as at least one person carries the seed of liberty that was planted by Thomas Paine, nurtured by the framers of the Constitution, and harvested by the true patriots and heroes of days past, present and future.