HAS AMERICA CEASED BEING GOOD?

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political thinker and historian, of the eighteen hundreds, once said, "America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good it will cease to be great." The question of today is whether America has reached the point of not being good? And should we care? Here's some stats that may make your heart ache for the republic:

• According to a Gallup poll, 37 percent of American citizens are incapable of identifying their home country on a map.

• The World Education Rankings of UNICEF ranks America below a minimum level in literacy, math and science amongst the world's richest countries.

• Two-thirds of people in the United States cannot name all three branches of the federal government.

• Seventy-six percent of Americans believe morals are getting worse.

• The Index of Economic Freedom, published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, ranks United States 8^th in the freest nations, behind nations such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Ireland.

• And to top off the WTF! Sundae, two-thirds of Americans think Karl Marx's maxim, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", was or could have been written by the framers and included in the Constitution, according to a nationwide survey commissioned by Columbia Law School.

America was once the "breadbasket" for the world. The great farmers of this nation not only produce enough to feed the world, but had more than enough to feed ourselves. As of 2005 America has become a net food importer and the world debtor since 1985 thanks to disadvantageous trading treaties "agreements" and government incentives that make it more profitable for companies to produce goods, and thus jobs, outside the borders. This has made America unprecedently dependent on foreign sources for our basic needs and is destroying our national sovereignty. Consequently, this has left us exposed to less regulated and lower standards of production in the foods that we consume and the products that we use, as well as vulnerable to military and economic threats as never before in our history. At a time that the U.S government owes virtually every nation on the planet from the China and Russia to The United Arab Emirates and the Cook Islands, it has a debt position that the Wall Street Journal reports, "the U.S. is paying noticeably more to its foreign creditors than it receives from its investments abroad", and is paying more than $80 million an hour to finance the ballooning debt.

All the while the man sitting in the seat of president fervently pursues a policy to allow the continued colonization by people from Mexico at a staggering cost of $113 billion a year -- an average of $1,117 for every "native-headed" household in America -- according to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). He is expediting the further transfer of high technology (which has been our one decisive advantage over the world since WW 2), infrastructure, and jobs to enemy nations such as Communist China and Russia, and India. Mr. Obama is in open warfare with the people of America in his attempt to fundamentally change America into a third world socialist state with the government takeover of America's financial industry, the medical industry, the attempt to severely cripple the energy industry via the oil spill in the Gulf and "Cap and Trade" policies, and is quietly going to impose the highest tax increase on every U.S taxpayer with the expiration of the G.W Bush Tax Cuts at years end. Not to forget about the tax increases that have come due to the bank bailouts, the "stimulus" bills, of which nearly half has yet to be spent, the trade deficit, and Obamacare. Government expansion does cost. All the while nations that are truly seeking to grow their economy and become more economically competitive, such as Estonia, Hong Kong, Iraq, Russia, and 20 other nations, are enjoying rapid economic growth by adopting a flat tax system and the average E.U country's capital gains tax rate is 30% and Russia plans to do away with the tax all together next year to "to attract more foreign investment to boost the economy", Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Mr. Obama seeks to further make investment and savings in America more troublesome by increasing capital gains taxes to more than 40%. Could Obama do any worst job governing the affairs of America if he was an actual foreigner of the land? If he had no real connection with the American people or the spirit of America? Could he?

I can remember growing up learning in school about the fight for the nation's independence and having to know about separate colonies. I knew that the Founders were very religiously grounded. One can feel that through their writings, as well as many others from that era. America's uniqueness and exceptionalism, despite some imperfections, was something to take pride in, not to apologize for nor be ashamed of, definitely not to forget or surrender. America once placed high regard to Biblical principles, not just on ourselves but especially on our leaders. America was once the beacon for those from all of the world seeking education on ingenuity, free thought, the principles of a nation based on the rule of law, not of man. American historian, Victor Davis Hanson, said that, "America used to welcome the contest of ideas against such closed autocracies - fighting not with their forced demonstrations and coerced sloganeering, but by teaching each generation the nature of elected government, the singularity of Western freedom, and the importance of consensual law. The idea of civic education was that to survive in an often hostile world...., free Americans had not only to be materially successful but also had to learn in the very first years of school those self-evident truths on which our unique country rests -unlike almost all other nations, which are founded on a shared race, religion, or birthplace."With the decrepit condition of the government educational system is there any wonder that the true nature of what freedom truly is and what the actual relationship of the people and the government is in our constitutional republic is basically a mystery to too many Americans today. Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter in August 2009 decried a "dangerous state of civic knowledge" in America. He warned that a lack of proper civics education poses a threat to judicial independence.

America's young are being spoon fed a continuous message of secularism, the homologous of homosexualism and heterosexualism, collectivism, and a world of no absolutes or consequences. But barely anything is being fed to America's next generation to instill in them the ability to comprehend logically, think independently, to behave in a moral and ethical manner, to know what the proper role of government is in a free society, nor the virtues of America and it's history.

The first President of the United States, George Washington, in his 1789 Inaugural Speech prophetically declared, "Until the people of America shall have lost all virtue: Until they shall have become totally insensible to the difference between freedom and slavery: Until they shall have been reduced to such poverty of spirit as to be willing to sell that pre-eminent blessing, the birthright of a freeman, for a mess of pottage: In short, until they have been fund incapable of governing themselves and ripe for a master." I ask you, that if it is not America who holds steadfast the flag of freedom and acts as the beachhead for all those seeking personal freedoms and liberties to be exercised as the Creator intended, and has the might to stand in the way of tyranny, than who? China?

America was established to be like no other nation on the planet where the people ruled the government and has the freedoms to succeed to their highest peaks, fail to their lowest valleys, and to rise up again. We have above all else the freedom to choose. We can choose whether the most important thing on our minds is if our sport team is winning the championships or whether the politicians that we elect are of the highest moral and ethical fabric and are acting in the best manner to ensure our and our family's ability to live free and prosper in the truest spirit of Americanism. It is we the people who has the extraordinary power of the freedom to choose our destiny as individuals and collectively, as Americans. We can choose to endure on the path less traveled of exceptionalism, uniqueness, and independence or ride the worn path of mediocrity and serfdom. This is the only question that needs to be answered by the people of America.