As we celebrate another birthday of this great country, I cannot help but think back on some of our history. What a grand history we have had. I know ...
As we celebrate another birthday of this great country, I cannot help but think back on some of our history. What a grand history we have had. I know some people are ashamed of our history and so we have revisionists rewriting American history. Nevertheless, I certainly want to celebrate the real America.
My wife and I were relaxing after a scrumptious supper and were watching a little bit of TV. I was half dozing, as is usually my condition after such a supper, when my wife startled me with a question.
It was a news program on television updating us with the latest political scratch-talk. If it were not for politics, the airwaves would be silent. Oh, for those wonderful sounds of silence. Personally, I would be glad to double my tax rate if in doing so we could put to silence all this political-scratch-talk. I call it "scratch-talk" because whoever is talking is trying to scratch somebody's back even if it is just their own. I guess we have a lot of itchy backs in this country. Thankfully, we have an endless supply of backscratching politicians.
It does not matter which way the wind is blowing each political party says it is blowing in their direction. I guess you have to go to eight years to Harvard and have a student loan debt of $120,000 to understand how that works. If you do not mind, I just do not want to know how it works.
With the politicians unable to create work in our country for common Americans, the real Americans, they sure know how to work a situation, usually to their advantage. If they could put all of this to work for the good of the ordinary American, I would feel happier about paying my taxes. As it is, I pay my taxes but not happily.
Back to my wife's question. "Who are," she said very carefully, "the real Americans in this country?" Then she paused for a moment and followed it with this question, "Who does America really belong to?"
Well, those two questions got me thinking.
Who are the real Americans? Are they Republicans, Democrats or Independents? I know there is a bunch of other miscellaneous political parties but I cannot think of them right now. Which one is the American Party?
If I do not like any political party, where does that leave me? I am all for parties, but the whole idea of a party is for people to have fun. I do not see any political party where I could have fun. The strange thing today is, if I do not "belong" to some political party I am not able to vote in this country. Moreover, if I do vote, who in the world do I vote for?
My wife and I got to talking about this and I, for once in my life, posed a question. How would you describe the average American?
Is the average American black, white, yellow, red or a mixture of colors? Do you define an American by the color of his or her skin? What about gender? Is the average American male or female? Then there is age. How old is the average American?
We bounced these questions around for a long time and did not come up with any good answers. Then there was silence.
I come back to one thought; why can't we just be Americans. Why do we have to have all the emphasis on variations, colors, temperaments and the people we elect to office who cannot tie their own shoes without conducting some poll? Why can't we send ordinary, common sense Americans to Washington DC who understands the American life?
Most of the politicians, if not all, live in a bubble and cannot relate to the average American in this country. I challenge these politicians to act like, live like common, everyday, normal Americans.
We normal Americans have to live on a budget. If I do not have enough money, I have come to the end of my buying spree. I think this concept ought to be copyrighted and sent to Washington DC. It is a new concept. It will need somebody to interpret it to those who are living in that venomous circle that we call the capital of the United States. I would recommend a first grader.
It would be refreshing to have somebody in Congress or the Senate who had common sense. I guess Will Rogers was right when he said the problem with common sense is it is no longer common.
A real American is one who is committed to the concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A real American is one who embraces the red, white and blue. A real American is the one who can clutch his five-dollar bill and say, "in God we trust." If it is good for our money, it is good for our life.
If only the American people, the real people of America, would wake up and see what our politicians are doing, perhaps they would do what our early founders did.
In celebrating another Fourth of July, my thought is simply, why not just be an American.
A real American also embraces what Jesus said, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's" (Luke 20:25 KJV).
Is that the sound of a drumbeat I hear off in the distance?
