LETTER OF THE WEEK: Parker's column on presidency lacked logic
Kathleen Parker is wrong in her May 15 commentary, " "Full-bloodedness' making difference in presidential choice," in the Asbury Park Press. I see three problems, none of which is "multiculturalism."
First, the competition is tough. There are 800 million people in India and 1.3 billion in China. Not all of them are smart, not all of them are aggressive and not all of them are tough. We are outnumbered 7 to 1. They don't all have to be smart, aggressive and tough, but enough of them are.
Second, we've become a nation of welfare queens. We drive our 10 mpg SUVs to the mall where we borrow money to buy junk that doesn't last, junk we are convinced we need, junk that is built by the people from whom we borrow the money, junk for which we'll be paying long after it's thrown into the landfills.
We got soft. We're not all that smart, tough or aggressive anymore.
Third, we trapped our soldiers in a quagmire in the crossfire of a civil war in Iraq. We toppled an evil dictator but our leaders didn't see that in his place would arise a power struggle. This has cost 4,000 American lives, 30,000 arms, hands or legs and $500 billion to $1 trillion, with no end in sight.
I don't know if stupidity, arrogance and incompetance are impeachable, but they should be.
We need to return to our roots, to what president Theodore Roosevelt called "actual life" and "the strenuous life." As he said in Chicago on April 10, 1899, "No country can long endure if its foundations are not laid deep in the material prosperity which comes from thrift, from business energy and enterprise, from hard, unsparing effort in the fields of industrial activity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly great if it relied upon material prosperity alone."
Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy were great leaders of a great nation.
John McCain would lead a nation that looks like him — old, weak, and tired.
Hillary Clinton would lead a nation that was once bright, beautiful and optimistic, that remains ambitious, but has become bitter and disillusioned.
Barack Obama will lead a nation that dares to be bold, that dares to be great.
No comments:
Post a Comment