AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
Unfortunately, I have become discouraged. In my lifetime, since about 1967, when the tearing down of America began, I have seen seven different presidents, each with promises, but nothing has improved; indeed, the hole we are digging is deeper. Each time we lose a war or an "action", we invite the losers to come here and settle; giving them benefits my own child and grandchild are not eligible for. We have flooded our colleges with kids who require high school math and reading courses to become sophomores. An eighth grade education in our day ("Mexifornia" author Victor Hanson also states this) is equivalent to a college degree as knowledge as one from Cal State Fresno.
You cannot maintain a civilization with 12 year olds having babies, 13 year olds killing each other and 18 year olds getting diplomas they can't read. The welfare state has failed because it subjects people to rules that are anti-family, anti-work, anti-property and anti-opportunity. The challenge of this generation is to replace the welfare state and replace it with what originally took America to the world pinnacle in 1944... hard work produces rewards.
In this vein, the tax system destroys incentives to work, and affirmative action punishes white eagle scouts who wish to go to Dartmouth. Medical schools are flooded with half a class of women, which is fine to start with, but 50% of whom practice medicine for only 5 years and then quit, the other half are "men", half of whom are picked for being disadvantaged, "of color" or handicapped. I know. I interview for UCSF. It breaks my heart to see the people turned away. This crop will become ER docs who opt for 9-5 jobs, or shifts at Kaiser. Few can or will rise to become great surgeons, as I knew the word, and the current class of terrific surgeons/internists hates the system so much that they seek early retirement as soon as they feel financially secure. We are losing the cream very rapidly due to economic and political pressures (me).
The military is being destroyed by long deployments, huge homecoming divorce rates and pay that would embarrass a sanitation worker in Bakersfield. We use robots and drones on the battlefield to replace the brightest and bravest who no longer wish to fly or serve. Doctors in the military are few and far between... and good places to train them are gone... so long Oak Knoll Naval, goodbye beautiful Letterman Army Hospital, forget Ft. Ord General Hospital and sayonara Madigan General Hospital in Tacoma. We have SEVEN neurosurgeons in the entire US Army. I had seven at my hospital in Nam, and there were SEVEN hospitals just like mine. (None of these men are in Iraq, nor is there a facility much better than your local Doc in the Box anywhere in Iraq.) Wounded fly 9 hours to Landstuhl, Germany, violating the "Golden Hour" and creating tremendous rates of amputation, both arms and legs. Col George Lavenson and I have just presented a critical paper on Iraq medical care, in Johannesburg, S. Africa, at the Int'l Military Surgical Congress... no one in the USA would accept it.
U.S. Senators are despicable people who hang on until senility and feel their power is greater than an elected president. Their pension awards, health and dental care, security and transportation, office expenses and travel perks exceed their current annual salaries by a factor of seven. (WSJ: June: 2005) They do not have social security. They do not have Medicare. They don't need it. They have benefits you can only dream about.
We obsess about a missing teenager whose family allowed her to go to a third world country as a prize for graduating from high school (!) but deny and sweep under the rug the fact that Al Qaeda is living right here in America and plans to kill us. We build bigger and bigger cars, burn more fuel, see rows and rows of new homes, but complain about brownouts and refuse to build a nuclear power plant, drill in ANWAR or mandate more efficient vehicles. Solar energy languishes and our coal (#1 in the world) lays fallow waiting for clean burning techniques and oil to stay above $60 a barrel.
Should I continue with child molesters who go on parole, only to kill again, serial murderers who appear in court dressed neatly in coat and tie, only to delight in recounting how he hanged a seven year old girl and masturbated as she kicked in her death struggle? And our sensitive, creative and kind American nature gave him the ridiculous sentence of 175 years in jail. Do you really think you want to pay for that, even if he lives just 25 years? Won't copy cats appear who will take his testimony, repeat his crimes on your children and once again, go twenty five years before being "sentenced"? Have you had it up to your eyebrows with 58,000 murders in the USA every year... the same number that were killed in Vietnam over 17 years of War?
How about corporate execs like Ken Lay, who can steal 80 million (Enron) and black activists like Julian Bond of NAACP who has openly called the president "Hitler". When I was a kid, racial discrimination in the North had all but disappeared, but professional racists like Jessie Jackson have made a living out of keeping the flame alive. Martin Luther King would be ashamed. Or the ACLU... American Communist Legal Union which will defend each and every terrorist with all their resources, including the 9-11 bombers had any lived.
Nope, it is not YOU or ME who have lost it. The destruction of America is real. We all thought the current president could, with Texas determination and Christian values make a difference, but he has not. He has only stuck a big stick into a place called Iraq and released a horde of stinging bees while our defenses languish. We are on the defensive... not on the offensive, and will lose that way. Ask me... I know Vietnam by heart.
We have protected the Korean border with the best Army division ever, for fifty years, but neglect our own Southern border with Mexico to the tune of 14 million illegals, forever here. We reward their breeding by making the children of illegals, born in the USA, immediate citizens. And then the family is "automatic". We award a scholarship to college to an unwed teen mother in Sonora, who has shown "heroic tenacity" raising her two children, but deny admission or aid to my neighbor's straight-A daughter. (Union Democrat: UC Davis June, 2005 Sonora CA)
On and on goes the litany. My wife tells me I have become bitter and have lost my "sunny" disposition. Perhaps I have, but for good reason. We are leaving our country to our grandchildren, who are wonderful and talented, yet they will have far less chance than we did. I have already told William, "go to college (if you can), get the education you want, and then if you don't care to bang your head against the bumper to bumper traffic, ethnic wars and stifled air of the big city as a cop, lawyer, doctor, teacher, restaurant owner, salesperson, whatever, you can come home here to the mountains, stay sharp like I do, and enjoy the fruits of my labor and money. You don't have to be in the mess if you don't want to, after college."
"On the other hand, if you want to be a Marine, go somewhere and get down and dangerous for your country and fellow grunt, and then put your life on the line for duty, honor, and country. I would rather have that for you than see you perish with your car against a tree with a blood alcohol of.15 on a Saturday night here in California."
Some things are just that way.