The American Struggle Continues
By J. Michael
Preface: From economy to national security, and spiritual battle to American freedom, this article offers additional snippets of “Things for Thought” including; Analysis of current and past events and concerns for potential future events, topped with my own logical points and suggestions. The American Struggle Continues.
Please also note previous articles:
“The American Struggle” - Published on January 22, 2001
“Change” - Published on February 26, 2001
---------------------------
To begin, I’d suggest printing off the above-mentioned articles along with this one and reading them as a series starting with the oldest one first, “The American Struggle”. Be sure to set aside some time before you begin, as they may be a little lengthy. While this isn’t really advanced reading, it should at least stimulate your own thought and discernment!
Historical Perspective:
I don’t claim to be a historian, but some things are well documented. Such is the case with all well known “world powers”, including the United States of America. The essential birth of America by our founding fathers began in 1776, granting our country with the right to life, a blessing of freedom and eventually wealth, during our pursuit of liberty and happiness for the past 225 years. We have risen to a nation of great power, through great wars and great depression – through sacrifice and honor – maintaining that rock solid foundation of freedom, we have become such a great country.
Others have risen before us, all have fallen. Typically, those countries have seen little more than 200 years of such greatness, are we exempt? What is the magic number? Where do we find the fault which brought each collapse? There is no simple answer. We Americans can indeed extend our longevity, unfortunately though, we are not exempt from failure. I believe both of these points have been demonstrated by the horrific events on September 11, 2001…a day that will not only live in infamy, but also infancy, and will grow to maturity.
As our country does what we can to bounce back in resilience, we see an underlying struggle, the American struggle. Every major nation of great power, rose in wealth and strength, and then fell in on itself, just like each of the Twin Towers fell in, on top of themselves. It’s a physical and spiritual journey, which mirror each other. As the morality fell in those great nations, so did the economy. As spiritual battles began to give way to evil, so went the physical strength of each “unbeatable army”. Slowly at first, with little sign and warning each nation would begin to tumble from the top, with it’s leaders being the first to fall. Once the momentum was started, it grew into a free-fall and literal destruction was all that would remain. At the point of collapse, only a super-natural power could sustain such condition - either preventing such doom, or merely extending it’s longevity. I believe this is part of why we, as America, have remained so strong. In part, the failure of past nations to concede to God, prevented His intervention on their own demise.
It is our duty to heed the warnings and signs of the present day. Our country has noticeably increased its tolerance towards what is wrong and as a “last call”, there has been substantial increase in our wealth. Often God uses such conditions to bring us back to Him in repentance. As the ‘90’s era of wealth passes behind us, we have entered a new decade were we’ve seen an increase in both natural disasters and man-made inflictions. From hurricanes and tornadoes to earthquakes, flooding and droughts. From bombings and attacks, to school shootings and dark alley muggings. Our economic markets have turned downward, with the past 18 months recording several historically giant stock market drops…recently falling over 700 points in a single day. Most people will simply dismiss recent economic trouble, finding excuses and blaming it on the attacks of September. However, this downward trend and movement to recession began almost 2 years ago, in early 2000. President Clinton was still in office, boasting “good times for all”, while we experienced a record market drop that year. In fact, the Nasdaq was sliced in half that year alone.
We are, in fact, beginning to experience many of the same things that past fallen nations began to endure prior to their own collapse. But it’s not over yet, and yes, there is hope! Please read on.
Presidential Inheritance:
Each president has their own legacy, and often times they are actually remembered by our “society perception”. Our nation as a whole has, over the years, become less dependent upon individual thought and conclusions and more reliant on the collective ideas. How collective thought becomes so mainstream and more so, where the final conclusion is drawn from is a phenomenon of its own. Regardless, it warps reality and eventually becomes whatever gets printed in the headlines.
I’ve said before that no man is perfect and so it is with all of our leaders, past and present. Each of our presidents have contributed great things, and each have left ugly scars and blemishes on the country. Over time, our laws and justices, rules and morals have declined. (“Change” - Published on February 26, 2001) The problem is, this decay has rapidly increased over the past decade. Setting aside personal opinions, former President Clinton had his share of negative influence. His background does not include a man of integrity, honesty, morality and dignity. Rather, his own history of lying, cheating, and stealing, brought our country a lot of false hope, diminished security, misunderstanding, poor guidance, division and lack of spirituality. Yes, there is even more, and those who truly look at who he is, what he’s done, and what he represents can’t argue the truth.
While it wasn’t necessarily blatant and obvious, he had 8 destructive years in office, which little by little tore away at the very foundation of this country – freedom. A free people with freedom FOR religion not freedom FROM religion. This country was indeed founded on religious principals by people seeking a government that didn’t force a specific religion on them, rather a government that allowed the free practice of religion, while providing only the essential guidance and protection to it’s people. This has become so twisted and misrepresented that it makes me ill. I’m not blaming Clinton alone, nor am I saying that this decline only began when he took office. I want to be clear in stating that I while he didn’t start it, he did speed it up.
It’s not just the lack of freedom, the ignorance of morality, or the danger of his deception. There is our very own national security. The main function of the Federal government was originally designed as national defense. Today, it’s become such a small part of the budget and such a minimal issue, that is of course, until recently. The ironic thing is, the same people that attacked us on September 11, also made AT LEAST 4 other major terrorist attacks on the U.S. during the years that Clinton was in office. Each of those four very notable attacks were on U.S. property and each of them were quickly dismissed and diverted from our attention. They include:
1. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The purpose of this attack was actually to collapse the building(s) at that time. Just because these terrorists failed in their mission (while still killing hundreds) doesn’t give our national defense an excuse to fail at their job too! Some arrests were made some action was taken, but for the most part, things went on as usual.
2. Two (2) separate attacks in 1998 of U.S. Embassy’s. This is American soil and considered no less important than the previous bombing of the World Trade Center. TV host of “Politically Incorrect”, Bill Maher had a viable point when he referred to our government, more specifically, the Clinton administration as “cowards” who simply launched a few missiles from over seas in response to those attacks. Rather than let these groups know that we won’t tolerate such behavior, we simply annoyed them while “pacifying” the American public by saying “we did something about it”, when really we didn’t.
3. The attack on the USS Cole in the fall of 2000. Visibly this shook up Presidential Candidate G.W. Bush, while again, bringing only short attention to President Clinton. Very little was once again done and quickly the devastating attack was left out of discussion and our attention diverted.
In addition to those attacks, we saw rampant school shootings and church massacres. Rather than concentrating on thwarting further attacks, and punishing the culprits, we felts sorry for the kids taking such actions and decided to punish the innocent by taking away more gun owners rights. Anybody with a reasonable and logical thought in their head knows that taking away guns from the good guys, only makes things safer for the bad guys who illegally obtain their guns in the first place.
From terrorist attacks, to a sliding economy and from domestic crimes to a decrease in freedom, President Bush has inherited quite a package from previous administrations.
America the Free - Or so we used to be:
How many of you honestly believe that airport security is really the flaw we need to be concentrating upon right now? Face it, if a terrorist wants to bring down a plane, he’ll do it. The only thing that will stop him would be the passengers on the plane. They didn’t need box cutters, knives or any such item. The threat of a fake bomb, and the use of string, or even a well trained hand would have been just as effective. In fact, think how much safer a plane would be, if you have 200 passengers armed with pocket knives and man power, against a handful of extremists who have no more than a couple of knives themselves.
Any time we take away freedom from the public, we only aid in the effectiveness and ability of the criminals. Where do most of these terrorists reign? Throughout history they’ve risen up in countries where rules are rampant, laws are outrageous and “THE PEOPLE” are nothing more than puppets. The reason for this is simple. When you limit the honest people, you enable the dishonest. I’m never in favor of rules or regulations that shift guilt to the innocent, freedom to the crooks or in any way assist the wrong while restricting the right.
I believe we are inappropriately directing our time energy and money in tightening airport security when in reality, this is not the place to head off a terrorist. We have a system in place, although obviously not used, which could and should prevent such terrorists from even booking a flight. We need better cooperation and communication within our vast national defense groups.
Above all that, we need to understand that we simply cannot prevent every single attack. All the money and power in the world does not make us immune to crime, domestic or international. We’ve been attacked before, and we’ll be attacked again. We can do our best to thwart some of these and help minimize the devastation and the repercussions, but we can’t stop it all together. So again, by taking away more freedom from millions of innocents, you are doing an injustice and only compounding current problems. The bad guys will always be armed, I would feel a lot safer if more of the good guys still had the freedom to protect themselves, and each other!
Ultimately we are responsible for ourselves. After all, why should the government take care of us if we won't take care of ourselves first?
Looking Forward:
So now what? What will happen? What could happen? What needs to happen? Will we collapse or will we conquer?
Now we move forward. We learn what we can from the past and we continue to live for the future. There is more to life than solving terrorist problems.
We will be attacked again, but we must remain strong and sensible. We live in a world of chaos and evil. It’s been that way since the days of Adam and Eve, so if we believe that we can wipe that away, we are sorely mistaken. This goes beyond religious extremists. We must continue to battle terrorism just as we must fight domestic evils that plague us every day. We must be smart and decisive and just as importantly we must be sensible and realistic.
I believe we will conquer, but that won’t prevent the American collapse. That will inevitably happen in it’s own time. Life as we know it has changed, and no, change isn’t always good! Join the bandwagon in this fight, but learn why you are on it and then do something useful to strengthen and purify it. We can’t afford to have a bunch of miss-informed people running around with revenge on their minds. Use the processing power of your brain; God gave it to you for a reason!
Yes we are a mighty and powerful nation, but we have turned our hearts from God. In the wake of the September attacks, many have repented, yet many have not. So even still, the American struggle continues – for now.
-END-
Return to: ThinkingAgain.com
