Swickard: The age’s most uncertain hour

© 2013 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “We come on a ship they call the Mayflower, we come on a ship that sailed the moon. We come in the age’s most uncertain hour and sing an American tune.” Paul Simon
     In these most uncertain hours some Americans wonder how our nation got to this point politically and as a society. They wonder with concern where America is headed. The question is: are things in our country going to get better or worse? The problem is even agreeing on what is better or worse.
      One definition of better or worse involves the freedom of citizens to make their own decisions. This measures the intrusive reach of government into our lives. Some citizens give up their personal freedoms in trade for being in the care of our government. Others are afraid that at some point the government will have no more use for them. The Government might literally kill those citizens who do not allow the government to get stronger. It has happened in other societies.
     So there is a divide in our country of citizens very worried and other citizens, in fact, most citizens who seem to be paying no attention at all to the desperate clouds on our horizon. They pray to the God Media and do not believe anything the propaganda Media does not endorse.
     It is a most uncertain hour for America. I personally have been through decades of uncertain hours but these hours seem very dangerous. When I was a child our whole world was minutes away from everyone perishing in a nuclear cloud of debris. We practiced nuclear attack drills in schools: under our desks.
These concerns are not as pernicious a threat as complete annihilation. But if I had died decades ago, I would have died a free person. Is it better to die young and free than live long and enslaved? Optimism seems out of place in a society that controls neither its borders nor its currency.
     Perhaps what makes this the most uncertain hour is there are no leaders of either party who grasp the dangers to our country. They are still jousting with each other for their own political power and do not face these potential disasters unless they can use the potential disasters as a political stick to strike their opponents. Read column
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