The Fourth

This post, while brief, is political in nature, and has nothing to do with writing fiction.

As a patriotic person all my life, and glad to be a citizen of the United States, I mark this year as the one I do not wish to celebrate Independence Day. I grieve the socialistic / communistic direction my country has taken, and at such a rapid and unopposed pace, during these several months since the November 2008 election.

Independence Day is for celebrating freedom, but I see freedoms slipping away as my countrymen want bail-outs, hand-outs, and "security" that only erodes liberty. In an attempt to keep the sinking ships floating, we've gouged holes in all the hulls, and everyone is going down together.

We are eager to believe a lie, and we succumb to false fear. Global warming has taken the place of global cooling that was among the fear-inducing news of my childhood, when we were told the world was headed toward another ice age. We're told that if we don't bail out failing institutions, we will all fail. But a gardener knows he prunes the dead and dying leaves to keep a plant healthy; he doesn't keep trying to nurture that which is dead.

Failure is an opportunity for future success. Why not let the abusers and misusers of the citizens' funds, of their trust, go down, thus making way for new banks and manufacturers?

This Fourth of July, I don't pray that God blesses America, but that He points her in the proper direction -- and that she heeds the warning.

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For a sobering reminder of the costs paid by our founding fathers for our freedoms, those we are simply letting go without a fight, read today's post at A Life in Pages, the blog by author Angela Hunt.