L’Observateur / November 15, 1999

Americans are so spoiled.

It has been well over a century since war ravaged our countryside. It hasbeen more than 175 years since a foreign power invaded our shores.

We live in a massive land with incredible natural resources, capacity for growing food, living space for all, a sound economy, and a stable government.

Children here can awaken in the morning with a roof over their heads and breakfast at the table. They can ride to school in a bus to a school wherethey can get lunch and gain an education.

We can travel about this great land in our personal vehicles with little restriction. We can talk about our national leadership with impunity,fearless of retribution by those leaders. We can even vote them out.We can gather together for political assembly, indeed, for any reason we choose. We can write and complain. We can read with little restriction.Here in America, we can go to a supermarket and buy food. We maycomplain about the checkout line, but our money is good, and so is the food.

If we are sick or injured, doctors are close at hand, as well as hospitals and ambulances to make sure we reach them. If our home or businesscatches fire, often, it is volunteer fellow citizens who will risk their very lives to protect our lives and property.

We can see a police officer without fear. We can see a soldier withoutfear. We don’t have armed sentries on every corner and we don’t haveroaming bands of terrorists endangering every day of our existence.

Instances of terrorism have cropped up in recent years in this nation, but nothing like has been endured in many other nations for much longer.

We in America also hold the privilege of a constitution with its Bill of Rights which guarantees basic human freedoms. We also have hosts ofpeople who dedicate their lives to preserving those freedoms.

America is envied around the world, and longed for by many who seek the freedom we so casually take for granted.

Yet, we often fail to vote, and we sometimes talk badly about our military and political leaders and rank journalists and lawyers at the bottom of the social ladder, and we rarely pay educators what they are truly worth.

And, even with all our riches as Americans, some of us feel the concept of patriotism is “old-fashioned,” and our school children are sometimes not taught that basic value.

It is when we don’t fully realize what we have when we fail to notice its absence.

Copyright © 1998, Wick Communications, Inc.

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