JACK ENGELHARD: IS AMERICA STILL BLESSED?
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/jul/22/america-still-blessed/
—Has our luck run out? There was a time, going back to George Washington, when a good guy would come along to save the day. Abraham Lincoln surely came along just in time. We were blessed. This does not seem to be the case anymore. Instead of Martin Luther King, we have Al Sharpton. What does that say? Plenty.
From coast to coast, there is anger all around. On the one hand, black rage. On the other hand, white rage.
There was a time when “God shed his grace” on us.
God is dead? If so, we killed Him. Talk on the radio, on TV, along the Internet, none of it is about American greatness. Rather, it is about fear and loathing.
We have become small.
A perfectly legal acquittal that was rendered by a perfectly legal jury has been consigned to secondary importance.
If the outcome does not fit, quick, change the rules, and rather than plead for calm and harmony, our leaders rouse the streets.
As a result of the George Zimmerman case, we are being asked to submit.
Simply put, we are being told to stop defending ourselves, so that if an assailant is white or black, we are urged to turn yellow.
John Wayne is dead.
Detroit, once the pride of America and the admiration of the world for its cars and its assembly-line prowess, now cowers in defeat.
No longer do we dream of conquering space. Instead we hope to catch up with China. We once reached for the heavens and indeed we got there July 20, 44 years ago when Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon, heeding a promise made by President John F. Kennedy, who challenged us to achieve greatness.
Neil Armstrong is dead – and so is the memory. Hardly anyone remembered to celebrate the anniversary of NASA’s achievement.
We do not talk about greatness anymore and we do not dream of scaling the wild blue yonder. We are happy enough just to pay the bills.
How have the mighty fallen?
Anthony Weiner, a man who shamed himself by exposing himself to women, is running for mayor of New York. Chances are that he will win.
Another slime-ball, Eliot Spitzer, equally disrespectful of women, is running for New York comptroller. He too will win.
Are there no good guys left, and is this why we are left with the bottom-feeders who crawl among us?
Name recognition, we are told. This is what sells.
Rolling Stone cover boy and fan club darling Dzhokhar Tsamaev has yet to announce his candidacy for New York or any place, but the night is still young.
This Boston murder suspect, what does he have? He has name recognition.
Our enemies now recognize us as sensitive and fearful.
A man yelling Alahu Akhbar goes on a killing spree at Fort Hood — thirteen fellow soldiers murdered!— and rather than name this slaughter Islamic terrorism, we call it workplace violence. This is what FDR warned about when he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” This is now a prophecy come true.
A man with no talent but with the First Amendment as his guardian produces a pathetic and truly insulting video against Mohammad.
Rather than win for himself the rights to free speech, he is arrested.
James Madison is dead.
The country was taken from us while we were making other plans.
The can-do spirit made us first among the nations. We can… yes we can recover our supremacy but only when we begin to trust our Judeo/Christian heritage that commands us to “be strong and of good courage.” If our leaders are lacking, it is up to us, one at a time, to saddle up and ride tall.
Irving Berlin wrote the words, “God bless America.” That is a song. It should be a prayer.
New from Jack Engelhard, the novel: Compulsive
Jack Engelhard, a novelist for such moral dilemma bestsellers as The Bathsheba Deadline, The Girls of Cincinnati, and the classic Indecent Proposal, his memoir Escape From Mount Moriah, and Slot Attendant – A Novel About A Novelist, Engelhard’s partly autobiographical expose about the trials of making it as a writer, brings his words to the Communities page covering all topics, with special focus on the absurdity of human behavior and reaches around the globe.
Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/jul/22/america-still-blessed/#ixzz2ZxMEodUW
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