For Americans, What Is Freedom?

From appearances, it is "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday," Americans' right during the holiday season to buy foreign made goods they can't afford, with money they don't have and to charge those purchases on credit cards with the hope of being able to pay those credit card bills. Somehow, freedom became consumption at any price.

To build consumer confidence, the government is encouraging the news media to assure Americans that their holiday shopping will lift us from the crumbling economy and back to prosperity. It won't happen for we haven't been prosperous in many years, instead depending upon credit and cheap money to keep consuming, until now we've reached the point of being overwhelmed by debt. Some pundits even claim that the U.S. consumers' massive credit card defaults last summer are a good thing because they paved the way for new credit and more buying of consumer goods. This is how crazy it has become. Meanwhile, 1 in 4 American children live in poverty: 16 million children!

America, what is freedom? What do we stand for? The right to fight endless wars? The right to invade and occupy nations anywhere America chooses and the right to kill anyone there who oppose it? Is it the right to build as many jet fighters, drones, tanks, ships and weapons of mass destruction as we want? Is freedom our right to pollute the planet? Where is the compassionate nation we all hope for, one that takes care of its people and offers a helping hand to peoples across the globe? Do you recall the America earlier generations of your family came to, to have a voice in their government and economic opportunity the rest of the world did not offer? Do you recall the America that used to be the greatest manufacturing machine the world had ever seen and from its profitable bounty created America's vast middle class and helped to rebuild other nations destroyed by war? That was a demonstration of our freedom and it became the American Dream. Where is the American Dream now, the one we promised our children and generation after generation honored until now?

Dick