Rather than asking "what" is America, I am asking "who" is America and that is the point of this blog.
Many people think that America is a "place", but down deep, it is really a "who" and that "who" is you and me and all of those who came before us. It is not a bunch of laws or even a written constitution, it is "us". Laws are important, but ethics and morality are more important. Americans like our freedom and that is only partially guaranteed by laws and police. Some obey the laws because they fear punishment, but real Americans obey the law to show their respect for their fellow Americans. If you don't get this, then I don't think there is any hope for America's future.
America can handle almost any problem when we have the ethics and morality to work with and help one an other. We have done it before during very difficult times and we can do it again today if we have the ethics and morality that guided us in the past. We are in the throws of some of the most significant changes in the history of both America and the world. It is not just the fact that significant changes are taking place, but it is also the rate of these changes. It is like world used to drive at 50 mph and how we have to drive 100 mph. I am not exaggerating. That is what is happening.
I pointed out in the past how the currency of the world is shifting from physical labor to intellectual labor and this has caused the economic "worth" of the human race much less equal. You only have to look at something like American baseball to see and understand this. Just 75 years ago the best baseball player earned about $50,000, but today, that same baseball player might earn $10,000,000 or more. This is in sports, but it is everywhere for special or limited skills, but it is in the intellectual area where is has had and will have the most impact. Poor may not get poorer, but the rich will get unbelievably rich and it is already happening. The future will clearly be much different from the past.
The above is a fact so we might as well face it. The challenge is how to deal with it. There will be much more wealth on the table, but it will be spread much less evenly. Now, back to "Who is America?" I don't think we can solve this problem of wealth distribution with laws as many think we have dealt with problems of the past. We will have to deal with it with ethics and morality. We have to come to grips with the fact that some individuals are blessed with greater intellectual talent than other, just like some are better baseball players than others. This is where ethics and morality come in. Even if one is blessed with special intellectual talent, they still need motivation to utilize that talent so there has to be a "balance" between rewarding those who have made the effort to build their wealth with those who have made the effort, but lack the necessary skills. I feel that balance like any balance is a dynamic thing which must constantly be nursed with our common ethics and morality.
At the base of the human race is the family and they too are victims of this change in individual worth. Some members of a family may or not be blessed with the skills of the future and thus like from the beginning of history those members of the family will have to support weaker member of their family. No law is required to make this happen. We need to look at countries like families too, and that is one of the reasons that we need to protect our family from the invasion by outsiders. It is not the responsibility of a family to try to save the world. This is particularly true if to save the world, you end up losing your family in the process. In the case of the current Green Movement, we need to remember this last important point.
My final point is that this trend toward a wider distribution of individual worth is only gong to accelerate and there will be no permanent solution. The solution will be dynamic and it will be driven by our ethics and morality, not laws passed by congress or mandates signed by the President .
