There are many nagging reasons why many Americans are “uncomfortable” and “uneasy” these days.
While most of us are not directly endangered by war, we are disturbed because we have many thousands of our American men and women facing great dangers in faraway Iraq and Afghanistan – with some suffering death and wounds, and all in challenging conditions.
While human life is our main concern, there are many billions of dollars being spent in those wars, with no end in sight. We dare not “turn loose” but hate to “hold on.”
Then there is the fact that our federal government’s finances are irresponsible.
Our taxes are too high.
We have a national debt of $13.2 trillion!
We are paying hundreds of billions of dollars of interest on it.
That debt is equal to nearly $43,000 per American.
And the national debt is rising $4.13 billion a day.
But instead of showing signs of great concern and demanding remedies, President Barack Obama and Congress are continuing annual budgets of about $1.5 trillion in the red each year.
We have huge sums of money going into “government medicine” programs in many unsatisfactory conditions.
There are many other things that our federal government is doing, on a large scale and at great cost – with many of the programs being obviously unconstitutional, in that they are not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States of America.
We are uneasy, too, about many of our top leaders, in both executive and legislative positions. Have we elected the “best,” the “wisest,” the “most principled,” the “most efficient”? Have we, the people, shown the degree of “good judgment” and responsibility that we should?
While most of us are able to go about our daily lives in “peace,” while others fight battles overseas, we are concerned that about 10 percent of our people who want jobs are consistently unemployed – and millions more are “underemployed.”
We want all Americans who desire to earn a living and support their families to have sufficient economic opportunities.
Still, with these and other concerns about our well-being, we remain the freest, the richest, the most successful, the most blessed nation this world has ever seen.
Isn’t it wonderful that we are so fortunate!
But we nevertheless face great challenges of judgment, character and enterprise.
With all of the many “good things” in our American lives, there still are reasons to ask ourselves: Can’t we do things “better”?