Economic Problems of the United States

 Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden opened up his debate with Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin by blaming excessive deregulation as the root cause of the economic woes of the United States . Biden claimed that American creditors were baited into borrowing more money than what they would regularly need. For instance, a creditor was persuaded to borrow $300,000 for a housing loan when what he actually needed was only $100,000. Wall Street turned loose, without stepping the brakes, thus causing the present economic chaos.

 During the debate, Palin paled in comparison with Biden, except for some gutshy remarks. She lacked the arguments and the facts and figures, in comparison to Biden who was able to convincingly list his arguments, delivered with flair and gusto. Palin clearly lost to Biden the momentum in the debate.

 As of this writing, the $700-billion bailout bill was already approved by the Senate, and there were some positive reports that some of the congressmen who voted against the bill have now changed sides and would readily endorse the bill when it is up for voting next week.

 But for one thing the $700 billion bailout money is not a carte blanche. There will be restrictions. Companies which avail of the plan will not be allowed to pay excessive salaries to their chief executive officers, no more millions of dollars in salaries, bonus and retirements benefits.

 Biden also promised that if the Democratic ticket wins, there will be a timeline, to end the Iraq and  Afghanistan wars, in which the USA is spending $10billion a month . Palin quickly termed the withdrawal as raising the flag of surrender. When Americans are watching their sons and daughters getting killed in the warfront, the two wars are becoming hard to defend because they get into their emotions and their pockets.

 It is not very hard to predict a victory for Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the next November elections, in fact, the polls already predicted and advantage for the Democratic team. - Eye Opener Column from Sunday Post Newspaper

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You - John F Kennedy (JFK)

In the life of this great nation, a few of its presidents have emerged from the pack as truly historic and memorable even more than others.  Of course, the presidents from the generation of the founding fathers certainly fit that bill including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  And presidents that served the country in times of great crisis also are deeply honored in memory.  But in recent memory, there probably no other president that brings up emotions of respect and admiration as much as that of John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy seemed to capture the hearts of the American people in a way that was unique in presidents before or since.  Part of it may have been the era in history that the country was in when he became the President of the United States.  The historic time between 1950 and 1970 was a time when the largest generation of youth, now known as the "baby boomers", was coming of age.  With them a new youth movement brought a sense of optimism, a "can do" attitude and to some extent a sense of revolution.  They were looking for new ways of seeing things, a new vision of the future and new leadership and John F. Kennedy was the perfect man of the hour to provide that leadership.

So much about Kennedy's presidency has an aura of romance and almost a fairy tale excitement of it.  From the naming of his family estates "Camelot" to the love affair that the public had with the strikingly beautiful presidential couple, Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy.  That touch of magic extended to everything he did and virtually everybody in his family including his younger brother Robert who was idolized as well and almost certainly would have served as president had he not been tragically assassinated during his early bid for that office.

But this was not to say that Kennedy was not a phenomenal leader.  He faced serious challenges.  The Cuban Missile Crisis may have been one of the most frightening show downs between a nuclear Russia and a nuclear America that has ever happened in history.  When it became clear that Russia was beginning to build bases in Cuba and arm them with those terrible weapons, this was no time for a weak president.  Had Russia been able to bully Kennedy or intimidate the young president and put those missiles in Cuba, it seems certain that the outcome of the cold war would have been one of failure rather than success.  But Kennedy was not bullied or intimidated and using the power of his office, Kennedy stood his ground and stood ground for all Americans and forced the Russians to remove those missiles.  

But this was not the only great accomplishment of Kennedy's administration.  It took a leader who had great vision and ability to inspire a nation as nobody else than John F. Kennedy could to set the sights of the nation on landing on the moon.  But Kennedy put that desire and that high calling in the hearts of his people and the nation rallied to finally see that man step out on the moon and declare, "This is one step for man, a giant leap for mankind."  That was one of the proudest days in American history and it was Kennedy who inspired us to that kind of greatness.

As much as the life and leadership of John F. Kennedy perfectly exemplified the optimism and youthful zeal of a generation, his tragic assignation changed the country forever as well.  On that sad day of November 22, 1963 when Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down America's beloved president, the hearts of Americans changed forever.

This was one of those days that almost everybody who was alive at the time, from school children to grandfathers remembered where they were when they heard the news.  Since we laid to rest this great leader, the presidency itself has never been the same.  While Americans will always respect their presidents, that sense of adoration for the man in the White House disappeared forever.  But the thing that did not disappear was the ongoing adoration of the man, John F. Kennedy, who inspired a generation and a nation to look forward to greatness and in the famous words of his inaugural address in 1961…

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Let’s Hope Americans Never Loose Their Sense of Calling and Destiny

America is a vast country covering thousands of square miles of land that traverses tremendously diverse climate and landscape.  From high and majestic mountains, to wide deserts to vast fruitful plains that seem to go on forever, the sheer size of the physical landscape of America is breath taking.

Obviously, this was not always the case.  When those earliest settlers landed on the east coast and carved out their stark settlements, they had no idea of huge expanse of land that lay to the west.  It took the bold explorations of surveyors such and Lewis and Clark to report back how stunningly huge the amount of physical space that was available for America to inhabit .

At first, the very idea of becoming a nation was seemingly impossible for the early settlers to grasp.  They came here to escape persecution, tyranny or to make a new home for their families.  If they could have looked a few hundred years down the line into the future and seen the powerhouse of a nation that would grow up from their work in those early years, they would have been stunned that this country grew to be such a world force.  So the earliest challenges of settlers and early leaders of the citizens of the young America was to grasp the scope of what they were about to set about to achieve.

But grasp that scope they did.  It seemed that the physical majesty of what was to become the nation of America inspired a concept that was just as grand as the land itself and that was the concept of Manifest Destiny.  Manifest destiny was the force that drove those settlers and explorers to drive their wagon trains across sometimes impossible terrain through difficult weather conditions and facing many dangers from animals and Native Americans alike to build a nation that spanned form the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.

This was the dream of the early settlers of this country.  They did not just see a new nation but one of importance, of an almost holy calling to become a virtual utopia of democracy and opportunity.  And part of that utopian vision was the idea of a nation that spanned ocean to ocean and from Mexico to the Canadian border as well.  

When you think about it, its phenomenal that a people who did not have space photographs of a landscape or high speed travel such as is common today to get a vision of a unified nation of such vast size and scope.  But it was more than just physical size that spoke to the hearts and souls of those early Americans .  Manifest Destiny spoke to a vision of greatness for America that was birthed in the hearts of even these early citizens.  

The size of the country was to be a reflection of the majesty of the human spirit and the magnificence of the American experiment to build a nation built on freedom, the will of the people and on democracy and opportunity.  Today such concepts seem ordinary and for that we can thank the early founders of this country for catching that dream together and making it a reality.

Many have criticized Manifest Destiny as greed or empire building.  And to be sure, mistakes were made and many people died or had their individual destinies hurt in the wholesale rush to the west that America experienced in its early decades.  But what is not diminished is that sense of calling and that sense that America was put here for something great.  That calling lives still in the hearts of all true Americans as we find out how we too can help our country fulfill its Manifest Destiny to be a voice for freedom and liberty in the world.  Let's hope Americans never loose their sense of calling and destiny.  Because if that dies away, something holy and magnificent will die with it.

Prepare for the American Thanksgiving

Each year America has a holiday in November that has taken on almost a religious reverence which we call Thanksgiving.  We give this holiday so much honor that it ranks with us along with Christmas and Easter as an important holiday in the hearts of family and as a nation.  But this holiday, so rich with tradition, has it origins in the earliest days of the founding of this nation.

The early years of the explorers to come to the American continent were difficult ones indeed.  Those explorers, we now call The Pilgrims, faced harsh weather, unpredictable relations with the natives, disease and other challenges as they carved out homes from the wilderness they found here.  Because their earliest homestead were in the northeast, the winters were harsh and their ability to build houses that could keep them warm and to find sufficient food was a constant worry to the men and women trying to raises families in America.

So anytime they received help from the native population, it was viewed as a gift from God and accepted with the greatest of joy and celebration.  A Native American chief by the name of Squanto saw the plight of these new neighbors and saw to it his tribe helped these young families to survive.  Besides providing food and wisdom about how to build structures that could keep them safe in the winter, Squanto taught them to fish, how to prepare eel and other strange sea creatures they harvested and how to farm.  

This act of friendship was the origin of our revered holiday of Thanksgiving.  The Virginia Colony established the tradition of holding a day of collective prayers of thanksgiving, and that tradition continues today.  Except it is not just a day of thanksgiving for the kindness and generosity of Squanto to our forefathers.  We take advantage of this day of reverence and thanksgiving to be grateful for all the good things that God has blessed this nation with.

The foods we use to celebrate Thanksgiving were ones that the pilgrim travelers found native to this country and the foods that, with the help of Native American teachers, they learned to capture, harvest and prepare to feed their families and prosper in their new home.  Turkey was a game foul that was in ample supply to the pilgrims once Squanto showed them how to hurt the bird with reliable success.  

The vegetables we love to have on our traditional menus also had their origins in the early lives of the pilgrims.  Potatoes, cranberries, sweet potatoes, green beans and all the rest were vegetables that the pilgrims had to learn to harvest, farm and prepare from natives of the land.  So in many ways, our modern holiday, despite the dominance of football games and the upcoming Christmas holiday, retains the atmosphere of those early celebrations.

And the meaning of the holiday, despite commercialization, has been retained.  Americans have much to be thankful for .  The abundance of the land, the health of the most prosperous economy on earth and a society that is free and able to encourage freedom in other cultures are just a few of the things we celebrate at this holiday time.  But for most of us, it is a time to gather family and friends near and be thankful to God for our health, for the blessings of jobs and for the privilege all Americans share to be able to live in the greatest nation on earth where opportunity is ample that any of us can make it and do well if we work hard at our chosen area of expertise.  And these are things truly worthy of giving thanks for.

Understanding the US Civil War

America has been part of some devastating battles over her long history.   World War I and World War II were tremendously difficult conflicts and ones that taxed the nation's resources to the maximum.  But none of those conflicts can compare to The Civil War not only for the brutality and devastation of human life but in the damage to social fabric that was caused by that terrible conflict.

America is proud that it has never had a battle on its native soil.  Other than Pearl Harbor and 911, we have never even been attacked on our own soil.  So it took a war of brother against brother, American against American to make even the possibility of war within the borders of America even possible.

The war's statistics are staggering for a relatively short conflict.  The war started on April 12.  1861.  It was the confederacy that drew first blood attacking Fort Sumter in South Carolina.  The battles of the Civil War and legendary.  We have come to honor the dead of both sides of this bloody conflict by preserving many of those historic battlefields even to this day.

Throughout the war, the North was at an advantage in preparation, equipment and supplies.  But General Lee, who commanded the confederate army, was a brilliant strategist and the battles often resulted in massive casualties on both sides.  When the final tally was drawn up, over 970,000 American citizens died from the Civil War.  While that may not compare numerically to the huge losses in the two world wars later to come, this figure represented 3% of the American population at the time.  And since the huge majority of the war dead were from America's youth, the hope for her future, the set back this war had on the development of America's economy was truly remarkable.

In modern times we look back on the Civil War as a titanic battle to bring an end to the horrors of slavery in this country.  And to be sure, the Civil War is and will forever remain a central part of black history and the beginning point of the civil rights movement in America.  But the causes of the Civil War were complex and diverse which only made negotiation and resolution of the war more difficult in advance of conflict.

Part of the issue that was being fought out was the rights of states for self determination as balanced with the rights of the federal government to determine affairs in the individual states.  On the surface, this may seem trivial compared to ending slavery but put in context, it was a critical relationship to iron out in light of our not very distant memory of our revolution against England for trying to impose unreasonable controls on the colonies.  

American's are fiercely independent people and that independent spirit was born in the battles of the revolutionary war where America stated firmly that they would no longer bow to a king or let the centralized government have such sweeping control over individual lives.  The outrage over how England tried to put the colonies under servitude was the foal that caused the explosion known as the Revolutionary War.  And much effort was made to assure there was language in the constitution and other critical documents to assure that the federal government would be severely limited from interfering in the lives of its citizens.

Beyond that the preservation of the union as one country was also in contest in the Civil War.  But it was the moral issue of slavery that made the Civil War such an emotional issue and one that caused people to fight with such ferociousness to defend their side.  In the end, even Abraham Lincoln made slavery the central rational for the war and determined that the end of this barbaric practice would be the legacy of this horrible conflict.

But one thing that also was a legacy of the Civil War was the determination that we, as Americans, would never turn our war machine on our own citizens again.  The war tore families apart and literally caused brother to war against brother.  Since reconstruction and the union of America, the country has had a bruise in its national psyche over this war and that bruise reminds us that we are one people and we would always be one people devoted to the causes of truth, justice and the American way of life .

The Greta War In America

The history of America is decorated with some of the great conflicts that have ever been fought by civilizations and for great ideals.  This was never truer than in World War II which was sometimes called the Great War.  As is so often the case, it was not a war that America wanted to become part of.  So often, it is when aggressors bring war to America that she is forced to respond.  But in all cases when America responds, it is with a fury that her enemies will seldom forget.

When you think about it, the very idea of a world war is terribly frightening.  And in every way, World War II was a world war because it caught up virtually every country and every continent in a global conflict that went on for years.  The enemies of America and her allies were well armed, intelligent, determined and powerful.  But America was up to the challenge and it will be up to the challenge again if the likes of Hitler dare to threaten civilization like this again.

World War II was also virtually a textbook case of flawless collaboration with our allies.  Working together with them almost like we were one country and one army we deployed our forces across multiple theaters of combat from Europe to Asia to Russia and across the globe.  We had to fight more than one enemy.  Hitler's Germany alone was a frightening enemy as it spread its evil influence across Europe capturing country after country and threatening to swallow up the continent whole and then move on to capture lands in central Asia and even America.

But we also had powerful enemies in German's allies, particularly Japan.  When this frightening enemy struck our forces at Pearle Harbor, it was a blow to America that could not be ignored.  For Japan, they had hoped to cripple the American military and remove all hope from the American heart to be able to strike back or become part of the conflict.  They got exactly the opposite as every man, woman and child in America rallied to build the kind of war machine that would bring the Axis powers to a crashing end, no matter what the cost.

But the most important thing that America said to the world when it took on Hitler's armies and defeated them was that totalitarian rule of free peoples would never be tolerated.  Hitler had dreams of world domination like the great kings of ancient Rome of the early Germanic empires.  But America had thrown off dictators when we founded this country and declared that we would not become the pawn of kings or tyrants.  We were not going to turn over that hard fought freedom to a madman while there was a fighting will left in this country.

It was not an easy battle or one without cost.  Thousands of America's youth gave their lives to preserve the freedoms that had been won by our forefathers.  Our leaders had to show a resolve and a unity that they would not blink in the face of a challenge and they would not let down the brave American soldier or the civilian population that stood behind them until Hitler and his allies were in defeat.  

The world saw what America was made of in that great conflict.  It saw that a country that was gifted with great wealth and prosperity was also willing to turn those resources to defend its borders and defend its allies.  It was a stern lesson for our enemies to learn that America was not a country to be trifled with in combat.  But then we showed that we were not a vindictive country when, even in defeat, we reached out to Japan, Germany and other defeated peoples and helped them rebuild from that awful war.  This too is a testimony to the American sprit and the American sense of fair play.  Let's hope that an enemy never rises up again to test that will because they will find as Hitler did, that America would not fail to respond to the call to battle or the call to honor which is her legacy.

America's Involvement in Vietnam War

In the annals of American history , there may be no other country name that evokes such emotion as the country of Vietnam.  The history of this conflict is more than just a military struggle.  The impact that the Vietnam conflict had on American culture and foreign policy for many decades to come makes it a truly watershed war in the life of a relatively young country.

Vietnam was not, on the surface as clearly a moral battleground as World War II or the Civil War had been.  That in itself made it more difficult for Americans to understand and become patriotic about as they had been in prior wars.  Yes, as in past conflicts, we found ourselves defending our allies, the South Vietnamese against the attacks of a communist neighbor to the north.  And in that way, it became a struggle to assist an ally, a military objective that America had long embraced.

But the war was not just with the North Vietnamese.  To a very large extent, the war was against the Chinese and the Russians who were using the theater in Vietnam to wear down the American fighting force.  It was a war that had been going on for many decades before the Americans got involved as a regional battle.  

Many foreign powers had gotten involved and left defeated so when America entered this conflict, it was a very different kind of war than we had been used to.  The armies mixed with the population.  There were no uniforms and formations and battle theaters as battle could occur anywhere at any time.  Combine that with a hostile jungle setting and the complete absence of any battle protocol and you had a formula for failure if not a very difficult road to success.

Vietnam also is a watchword for the tremendous resistance movement that rose up on American soil to try to stop the conflict.  This resistance movement became deeply entangled with a huge change to the social fabric in the rise of the youth movement, the hippies and the fast moving surge of the civil rights and the woman's rights movements.  This made the era of the late 1950s through the early 1970s tremendously difficult to navigate as a nation.

Vietnam did follow somewhat of a predictable path of invasions, major battles, set backs and regrouping of our forces.  But the military faced a huge challenge in facing the many new war scenarios this difficult combat setting presented.  As the casualty count grew, without a clear cut definition of victory and with very few clear victories to demonstrate to the American people our superiority, the ability of civilian leadership to sustain the support for the war effort became jeopardized.

Vietnam very much represents a transition in how America viewed conflict.  We came out of the huge successes we had seen our military bring in battle.  The defeat of Hitler and the axis powers in World War II gave America a sense of confidence, of divine calling to prevail militarily and the concept that we are the good guys and we will always win.  But we did not win in Vietnam and that was and is a hard lesson to learn.

America demonstrated its devout dedication to the concept of supporting an ally in a warring situation when it committed troops to the Vietnam conflict.  But there were many lessons to be learned about preparation and going into a conflict with a strategy that had a high probability of success.  In wars to come in later years such as Grenada, the Balkans and the Liberation of Kuwait, we demonstrated that America had learned those lessons going in with a massive force and achieving victory before we got bogged down in a long civil conflict.

So we can applaud the bravery of our troops and the willingness of our leadership to learn from a tough war like Vietnam.  The lessons to be learned from Vietnam are still being worked out.  But in the end, we will be a better nation and a stronger nation because we put ourselves on the line for a friend, even if the outcome was not the desired outcome.

Americans Are Not Quitters

It was one of those moments in American history that the people who were able to watch it for the first time felt like they were in a science fiction movie.  But with televisions cameras on every move, the nation and the world watched on July 20, 1969 as three American astronauts landed on the moon.  

The project had been in the works for years to be sure.  You have to wonder with the phenomenal amount of work, expert engineering and the amazing genius that created the rocket ships and everything that would be needed to make the flight possible, if even those in NASA sat in mute wonder and had goosebumps when "Buzz" Aldren was the first man in history to put his foot on another world and pronounce those famous words –

"That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

That phrase, which itself was carefully prepared, has a lot of wisdom in it.  Sure, touching another world for the first time in human history was a tremendous accomplishment for America.  But more than that, it signaled a new era for humankind everywhere.  All of a sudden, the moon wasn't a far away myth, full of mystery and magic.  All of a sudden, people everywhere felt like they too could touch the stars if they put out their best efforts too.  

It was also a huge moment for the unity of all people.  Few things cause the world population to come together and link arms and be one people, not separate countries.  Most of the time, it's a terrible global disaster that makes us all bond together.  But this time was different.  This time is was a moment so phenomenal that everybody stopped and watched and everybody knew that this was not just a great accomplishment for three astronauts and scientists that put them there.  This was a great accomplishment for mankind.

American history is populated with tremendous events, both bad and good.  But it's worth a moment to sit back and reflect on what the first moon landing meant and continues to mean for Americans and the American spirit.  You have to wonder if any other nation would have had the ability, the creative powers, the powerful minds and the collective will to see this kind of amazing accomplishment through to success.  

It's even more amazing when you remember that just a few years earlier, on September 12, 1962 that President Kennedy challenged American to rise to this challenge in a speech at Rice University.  It takes a lot to make something as historic and earth shaking as landing on the moon a reality and visionary leadership such as Kennedy showed that day was a big part of why this landing made history.

This amazing achievement points out something outstanding about the American spirit.  Americans are a people who dream big.  And to land a man on the moon took big dreams.  But we didn't just dream to put a man up there, it was not acceptable unless we got everybody home safely as well.  

For the most part the American space program has had a phenomenal history of success in breaking through barriers that nobody had every done before.  Yes, there have been set backs and tragedies along the way.  But Americans are not quitters and through all the struggles we face, we face them together.  But we never forget to look up at the stars and dream of the day that yet again we see an American set foot on another world and plant out flag in that soil to be signal forever that America was here!

Historical Events That Changed America

American history , or really history in general is not always marked with outstanding events, stunning personalities or remarkable speeches.  Much of the history of a great nation is slow steady improvement, set backs and then how a people recovers from those set backs.  But in the context of American history, there are a number of truly phenomenal moments when everything changed.  These are not just one day events, although some are that sudden.  But these are events that once they transpired, Americans thought of themselves , the world and their place in the world completely differently.  And it's worth noting what those events were and how they changed Americans forever.

Obviously the revolution itself and the founding of the country changed a small group of colonies who thought of themselves as Englishmen far from home.  When the independence of America was done, that vision of ourselves was completely different.  We were now a proud new nation, a new type of nationality that had its own view of the world and its own hopes and dreams as well.

World War II was the kind of event that once we underwent the tremendous trial, struggle and victory that such a war demands of a people, we never could go back to seeing ourselves again in the same way as we thought before the war.  Our victory against Japan, Germany and their allies gave us tremendous confidence that we could affect world history for the better.  But it also gave us a tremendous sense of responsibility.  When we dropped those bombs on Japan, everybody on the planet began to understand the horrible power that was now in the hands of mankind, for a season in the hands of America and the huge responsibility for the fate of mankind that came with that kind of power.

Pearl Harbor while part of World War II deserves its own mention because of the fundamental change to how America viewed itself in relation to the world.  Prior to that attack, America considered itself invulnerable.  Like a teenager that thought they could never be hurt, we had never been attacked on our homeland before.  But Japan proved that they not only could attack us but that they could hurt us very badly.  Yes, we responded with a fury but from that moment forward, we knew that we, like everybody else in the world, were vulnerable and we had to start behaving differently in a world full of both friends and enemies.

Outside of the military world, the famous I Have a Dream Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963 did not just change the black community forever.  Yes, that speech had a mighty impact on the way the African American community saw their future and it gave inspiration and hope to a struggling civil rights movement that spurred it on to victory.  But it also affected all Americans because we started to see ourselves as a community of many cultures, many races and many orientations.  It was the beginning of acceptance in this country.  But that is a process that is far from over.

In modern times, the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 had a drastic effect on the minds and hearts of America and indeed on the world.  We are still learning how that effect will finally show itself as the ripples of shock, fear, anxiety and reprisals are still going on.  But to be sure, as with Pearl Harbor, the effects on our feelings about our place in the world and our vulnerability were certainly be changed forever.