The purpose of the American Blog is to highlight and discuss matters related to being good citizens in a democracy.
The American Blog is an adjunct to Good Citizen, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) non-profit with a mission to teach Americans the importance of being involved and how to be effective citizens. It's focus is in on identifying simple, yet powerful, things - citizen actions - each of us can do to keep the country strong, vital and free - goodcitizen.org.
On that same day, fewer than 40% of registered voters and 30% of eligible voters were willing to take the time from their "pursuits of happiness" to vote. It was too big a sacrifice.
Our unwillingness to take on the responsibilities of citizenship to keep this country safe and free is the single most important issue we face. It’s a national disgrace.
The top goal of this nation needs to be to teach its youth the importance of being involved in a democracy and how to be effective citizens.
The defeat of the recent Senate immigration bill, designed to deal with illegal immigration and which had bi-partisan support, is an example of the power of democracy. Americans were outraged by what was being proposed and they rose up and convinced their representatives not to support the bill. The country would be stronger and safer if we did this more often!
Unfortunately, the death of the immigration bill seems to have also been the demise of further attempts to fix the illegal immigration malady. Many outside of goverment have proposed immigration reform plans of their own. Here are elements included in many of these plans and which are needed to end illegal immigration.
How can Americans have war fatigue? What could we be so be tired of? We haven't been asked by our so-called 'leaders' to help or make sacrifices in the war effort. And few of us have done anything on our own. The only Americans fighting and impacted by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are the American military and their families. The lives of most Americans haven't been affected at all.
Certain groups want to destroy our country. They have told us and shown us. They fly planes into buildings, behead individuals and broadcast the killings and blow themselves up in places that will kill as many as possible. They brainwash their youth to hate.
They believe we don’t have the will to stop them. They count on our unwillingness to take time away from our pursuits of Happiness, our willingness to see others being slaughtered but not act because it isn’t affecting us - yet, and our willingness to be intimidated. They count on our misguided sense of how a civilized nation should fight a war. The reality is a civilized nation does whatever is necessary to survive even if that involves actions the nation doesn’t embrace under peaceful circumstances. The British learned this when they thought the civilized way to fight a war was to wear red uniform coats and line up in rows when attacking.
