I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!

We've heard that a lot lately, but what does it mean? Back from what, or back to what? Back to the depression years I remember as a child, back to the terrors of world War 2, back to having my husband in Korea where I couldn't communicate except with snail mail,  back to the crazy times and suspicions and ruined lives of the McCarthy era, back to the years when economically we grew stronger and stronger while our place on the throne of moral leadership for everyone aspiring to freedom grew weaker and weaker, until now, when instead of being the most admired country and people up through WW2, we are the most distrusted and even hated country in the world. I'd sure like to go back to those times when we were so proud of our country and what we stood for, I'd like to feel that pride again, and feel the admiration of most people everywhere, but we can't go back, you can never go back. Why? There is no such thing as time travel, and, we can't dictate what other people think of us, even if we do everything absolutely right. There are those who won't like what we are doing because we may be threatening their way of life, they may be jealous of our success, or they may not like to see people of another faith, or skin color succeed. Imagine that! Do we think we are the only country with prejudiced groups? We have yet to see that not being an all white, all Christian nation, might become a great advantage!

How about taking us back to a country with a balanced budget, back to a point where our expenditures are no more than  what we raise every in taxes every year? Well, I'm all for that, but we can't just "take" our country back to that position. No, we have to make it happen, not by wishful thinking, not by ''reloading" for God's sake, whatever that means, and not just by cutting social programs, always the first target of the cost cutters. Why do we always look to programs like health care and social security, and schooling, things that are vital to the lives of all, as if they were the "icing" on the cake and not the foundation stones of society. We can cut inefficiencies in any program, we can make everything meaner and leaner, we can stop throwing good money after bad when something has proved to not work. But we can't cut the repayment on the massive amount of money we borrowed in the past administration, and the only way we can get back to square one, no matter how much we cut non essentials from our spending now, the absolute only way we can recover from the over spending and under taxing of the past, is to dig in our pockets, everyone's pockets, and start taxing more. No one dares say it, it is as if tax, a three letter word has become the most unsayable four letter word, but there, I've said it, WE MUST RAISE TAXES.

To think you could take the country into a trillion dollars in debt, then leave it staggering on the brink of a depression with no hope of a quick fix, or immediate regrowth of the economy, and not have to change our life style by cutting back on personal pleasures to make up the shortfall, is hiding our heads in the sand. The people out of work can't pick up the burden, they need our help, but the rest of us can live with a little less of this and that,(and if its less junk food we will save money two ways, not wasting money on non nutritional food and much smaller medical bills), and help buy our way out of the predicament we put ourselves in. We all share in the guilt of doing the wrong thing, those who chose a path that didn't work, and those who didn't protest loud enough, but relaxed into lethargy when the money was flowing in. So quit getting angry now, its too late for anger, stop with the cries of "Take our country back," knuckle down, prepare to sacrifice a little and say, let's "Make our country back!" We danced, oh how we danced, now we have to  pay the piper. 

So much of the money is just to pay the interest on what we borrowed, nothing we will ever see results from, other than our credit rating, which is very important after all. And much of it, I hope much of it, is to move us into the future. You don't see the immediate results of better roads and trains, ports, or a new electric grid,  not while they are being built, except in creating those all important jobs, but no nation moves ahead without these things. We don't immediately see the results of the effort we put into educating our youth, but they are our inventors and innovators and people who keep the machinery working in the future. The future that is going to demand more and more skills at every level, unless we want to be the country who does the sweat shop work for those countries, who right now, are stepping beyond us. Come on everybody, lets MAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK,BACK TO THE FUTURE, the future that will be better for all of us, and, we hope, all the world.