I would like to add some more fuel to the inferno.

What was is was, and what is is. The world may owe us a debt of gratitude for what was done 60 years ago, or 50, or even 40 years ago, depending on where you are. They may also, while not willing to admit it, owe us something for what we continue to do today, even if they don't agree with it.

However, too many times I've seen 'the ugly American' both here and abroad raise their heads and shame our country and what we stand for, just by their attitude. How can people from other countries act when we have people who are plain jackasses? Our government is often times no better. Shit falls down, not up, although it may rise up from the underlying current or content below it. So, we can have it in our country, and at our top levels of government, and Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, I think we can safely say that over the past 20 years, we've had a lot of shit at the top of the heap. Last time I checked, it isn't any cleaner.

We aren't the great country we once were. Our 'Bread and Circus' form of welfare has guaranteed that. Someone stated earlier that we do help the needy, meaning the low income. Yup, we do. And often time that help is into a comfortable chair where that person or family stays, working the system because it's easy. We DO see crime, and lots of it, coming from these type of people. Been there, done that, thank God I'm gone. Not that I was ever a criminal, but I was low income, working my butt off to make something of myself, but I lived around and with these people, and I saw first hand how much crime is associated with welfare. When that is reported on the news, it's hard to think about how great we once were.

I wonder what percentage of European people would go to work and not lock their homes, and what percentage of Americans would do the same.

I make no claim that Europeans are better than Americans, or Americans are better than anyone else, even if it so seems to come across that way.

On the other hand, for over the last 100 years, it seems that the U.S. has been the big brother, world police officer, and breadbasket for the needy. So, I also would wonder what might happen if the United States stopped doing the things we've done for so long, protecting others, offering aid and humanitarian relief. I wonder what it would be like if we stopped providing arms to countries that we are allied with, or even convienently associated with. At the beginning of World War II, most of the United States felt that it was a 'European' problem and to leave us out of it. Of course, those in Washington knew better, and provided all sort of help, from 'Lend/Lease' to actual military intervention before we were 'officially' in the war. Imagine what that would be today, if we adopted that policy.

I get a little antsy at the rhetoric that spews forth Anti-Americanisms, but then again, some of them are very well deserved, and I can't blame someone for calling them like they see them, especially when they're true. I just wish my own countrymen would get their heads out of their asses and look around them, and look at the impending doom.

In 1977, I attended a teaching in Virginia Beach, Va., taught by what I considered to be the most educated man in the Bible and God's Word at that time, and he told us that things that had happened in the previous two years had already launched this country over the cliff, and that we would not recover from it before we crashed. For thirty years since, I have continued to watch our country careen out control, toppling end over end as we plunge ever faster and faster towards the rocks below. When it will all happen, I do not know, but that it will, I have no doubt.

At that point, I wonder what the world will do.

Gary

I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!