By Kirk Abner |
By Kirk Abner |
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You know there’s been a lot of news headlines lately about this being a nation under God. Nothing like taking a slap at one of our American symbols that will draw the ire out of good folks. I sure don’t blame them on this one. I never served in the military. They quit enlisting right after I got my draft card during that Vietnam era. But I do love this country of ours. I fly the flag daily, take my hat off at the national anthem, and get big chills when an F-16 flies by. And I’d watch presidential addresses everyday if he felt so inclined. So patriotic? Me? You bet your bottom dollar. But this being a nation under God? I really don’t believe that’s quite my call. I’m aware that it was the brainchild of those remarkable framers of ours, but I don’t believe I would have ever come up with that moniker myself. Now I wouldn’t go so far as to sue somebody over a few words and ruin everybody else’s parade, but I do like to ponder it. I know there’s a lot of folks in this country who think the sun rises and sets around their derriere, but this being a nation under God? Wow, that’s a toughie. I can see how that might sound a bit presumptuous to a lot of our foreign friends, leaving them out in the cold and all; then again who cares what the French think. It does make you wonder though. Who created their nations? Beelzebub and Brown and Root? No, it seems to me, based on my readings that this is more probably a whole world under, or in fact a total solar system under God, or whatever the biggest word we can come up with to describe everything. So just trying to claim Him as our own? Kind of reminds me how the kids at day care shared their candy after Easter. But now that we’re on the subject. Let’s just suppose that this really is a nation under God. I’d like to taste the proof in that pudding? Maybe God was on our side early on when we got here and wiped out all those eastern seaboard Indians, and then when we moved west and wiped out all those mid-western plains Indians, and of course after we herded up all those southeastern Indians and sent them out west. Yep, there was no doubt a lot of divine providence going on back then.
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And I’d like to think that it was God who helped us against the Nazis and the Japs and all those other evil empires of old back during WW’s 1 and 2, but I’m guessing it really came down to good ole American military firepower. Like today, look around. Sure we can still win wars, but how’s the rest of our landscape look? Where’s God in all of that? Psst- You know why the founding fathers decided to keep church and state separate? If government ran the church, Jesus never would show up on time; hee-hee. Far be it from me to lay all the blame over there. But you have to admit, by in large the church population in our country has suffered, on a statistical basis at least, just as much divorce, bankruptcy, unwanted pregnancies, murder, drug abuse, prison time, school dropping out, suicide, incest, and felonies as the rest of us. Of course, were this just another organization, the Boys Club for example, or the Daughters of the American Revolution, then I’d chalk it up as just another case for the law of averages. But these are supposed to be church folks. In a recent report from the US Department of Educations’ National Center, Secretary of Education Rod Paige tells us that basically we’re just average. Finland and Canada cleaned our clocks in reading, where we tied the Czech Republic. In math and science- you guessed it. Japan and Korea held top honors where we again tied the Czech Republic; the Czechs and the Norwegians if that makes you feel any better. And have you seen Greg Critser's new book "Fat Land" in your local bookstore yet? He tells us sixty percent of Americans are overweight and twenty percent are obese and approximately one quarter of Americans under the age of nineteen are too heavy, a figure that has doubled in the last thirty years. Editors
interested in featuring gailmcfarland@artistmarket.com
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