By Nathan Barton

A good friend of mine sent me this article, which readers of her column (to remain anonymous for now) had sent her several times.  I could not find a source, but still want to share my own responses to the claims and the “solutions” presented in the original article.  It is entitled, “Discontented?”
My comments are in italics, following the quotes from the article.

PART 2  (Click here to see part 1)
Meanwhile, we enjoy the freedoms that are protected by an all-volunteer army that is out there defending us.  Make no mistake about it.  Our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere overseas have volunteered to serve, and in many cases have died for our freedoms. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn’t have to go. They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ”general” discharge, an ”other than honorable” discharge or, worst case scenario, a ”dishonorable” discharge after a few days in the brig.

I write this as a serving (Reserve) officer:  the Army and other services today are NOT protecting our freedoms, especially not OVERSEAS.  They are serving the self-serving Congress and White House in maintaining an immoral and illegal empire. And keeping people who are angry at the US government (for good or bad reasons) from figuring out better ways to kill us and attack the US and our allies.  The dead have not died in vain, but they are NOT dying for our freedoms.  Not now.  Indeed, the more that have died in Aghanistan and Iraq and other places, the more our freedoms have been stolen by Congress and the White House and our state and local governments (overall) – see New York, Connecticut, California, and Colorado for RKBA, or ObummerCare.  He makes good points about the draft (and how many of us prayed for a long time to end that travesty of freedom).  But he misses the point: what is in the past is no longer true.

So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69% of Americans?  Say what you want, but I blame a lot of it on the national media.  If it bleeds, it leads, and they specialize in bad news.  Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts.  How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner?  The national media knows this, and media outlets are for-profit corporations.  They offer what sells.  Just ask why they were going to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book and do a TV special about how he didn’t kill his wife but if he did, how he would do it.  Insane!  And we tune in to this stuff day and night!

The MEDIA?  You know I never hesitate to bash the mainstream media, but this is an incredibly shallow excuse for what this writer sees as the problems.  We are often talking about things that would never have made the news outside a small-town weekly, twenty years ago – that the media just ignored (not saying suppressed) and information that wasn’t available unless you could go directly to the source for the data and records.  And how is the media really different than it was in the days of yore: say 1898 or 1917 or 1929.  I don’t know about Ben Franklin, but it seems that almost every big-city paper since him has specialized in bad news.  And O.J. Simpson?  When did this get written?

Stop buying the negative venom you are fed everyday by the media.  Shut off your TV, set aside your electronic gadgets and use the negative news pages for the bottom of your birdcage.  Then start being grateful for all we have in our country.  There is exponentially more good than bad.

Again, simplistic and just not a solution,  maybe not even true.  You notice that the writer did not address the immoral acts and lack of responsibility exhibited every day by millions of Americans – from the White House down to the drunk passed out in the town park.  He did not talk about corruption of governments (tribal, state, local, national, “world”).  And a lot of people gave up on TV and the dailies (“big dailies” like RCJ and SFAL and such, not just the NYT and WaPo and Chron) a long time ago.  And those electronic gadgets are the ones that also bring GOOD news like people who have saved some one or prevented crimes or helped out where needed.  He is throwing the baby out with the bathwater!  AND proposing things that don’t make a bit of difference.

I close with one of my favorite quotes from B. C. Forbes in 1953:
”What have Americans to be thankful for?  More than any other people on the earth, we enjoy complete religious freedom, political freedom, social freedom.  Our liberties are sacredly safeguarded by the Constitution of the United States, ‘the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.’  Yes, we Americans of today have been bequeathed a noble heritage.  Let us pray that we may hand it down unsullied to our children and theirs.”

This may have been true in 1953 – my grandparents and parents thought it was (I was still two years from being born, then).  It might have even been true in 1973 or 1983.  By 1993, the Constitution was a virtual dead letter, and “complete” freedom in anything dying.  By 2003, the opposite was true, and in 2013, we have less and less freedom by the day, and the Constitution is not just dead and buried, but condemned and ridiculed by the judges and lawyers and elected officials who swore to uphold it – and are damned by their betrayal.

I suggest we sit back and count our blessings for all we have.  If we don’t, what we have will be taken away.  Then we will have to explain to future generations why we squandered such blessing and abundance.  If we are not careful, our generation will be known as the ”greediest and most ungrateful generation” – a far cry from the proud Americans of the ”greatest generation” who left us an untarnished legacy.

Any idea when this was written?  Even 30 years ago this might have helped, but today, many of our blessings HAVE been taken away, in greater or lesser degree.  We DO have to explain to the future WHY and HOW we threw them away.  It was not just THIS generation that squandered our liberties: we CAN blame much of the “greatest generation” including such prominent names as John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson and Richard M Nixon and Gerald Ford and Robert Dole and millions of unknown people who didn’t pay attention and didn’t stand up for their liberty and that of others, or let their fears trade liberty for a false security against the USSR and China and Islam and terrorists and poor health and all the rest.

More to the point, what is he proposing?  Is this it?  Stop listening to the media (1), Be thankful for things that don’t exist, (pretend that they still do?) (2), and count our blessings (3).

Maybe I am being a Bible thumper, but what about (1) Repentance, (2) Prayer asking for forgiveness and help and strength, and (3) Action to correct these things?

What about what Joel said to the people of Israel?  What about speaking up to counter all these things?  Why did he write this article?  To blow off steam, or was he really trying to present a problem and a solution?  What he seems to have come up with is a whitewash – what a wonderful place and what a wonderful people we are, with just a few things, like insufficient pride and thankfulness.  He sounds like the Pharisee of whom Jesus spoke.  He was thankful, too: Luke 18:11: The Pharisee took his stand and was praying like this: “God I thank you that I’m not like other people – greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. …” Of course, if most people who claim to follow Jesus today even DID as much as this Pharisee – he gave a tenth of “everything I get.”  Would that half of christians today gave just 5% of what they get to preach the Word and help the sick and homeless and all the other things that could turn the country and the world around!

If you have never been in any country other than America, you don’t realize that you never had it SO GOOD!

Almost, I can agree.  But he is still wrong: it is NOT “never had it so good,” but rather, “once upon a time, it was much better in American than any place else in the world, and than it is today.”  This writer is a jingoist, though.  In so many ways.

God Bless America!

At last, something I can agree with.  This kind of article is so common today: we must have black or white:  but no one seems to want to take a position that says, “As wonderful as America has been and still is, we have severe problems and have lost much of what made us a free people and nation;  those problems are the result of our own actions and failure to act, individually and collectively.  They are a result of our pride, our rejection of God (partial or complete), and our refusal to require responsibility of ourselves and others.  For years, we have swept problems under the rug or found quick and easy, bogus solutions that really didn’t solve the problems, just put the inevitable off, and more and more divorced ourselves from God and common sense.  We let crooks and evil men pander to our weakness and lead us into sin, but we ourselves are responsible for what has happened, and only each of us, individually, can start doing things to fix the problem.