America needs humility pros, cons of our conflicted country

by Jonathan Seaborn, opinion editor

 

America is my home, and I am proud of that. I am an American.

But I am far from proud of many of the things our homeland has done and is doing. I have heard people say “America is the best country in the world,” and I think to myself how are people judging this? Where are the facts? So I went out on a mission to see if America could hold up to its self-proclaimed godliness.

First, I thought to myself, maybe we are number one in education? Well, I was wrong. We are behind England, and even Canada, in the number of students who go to college after high school. So we have fallen behind in education, letting young people down, and leaving a very dim light for their children.

So, if not education, maybe we have more people working. Oh yeah, that’s right we sent all our jobs overseas. So that sends the number of people who had jobs down. Hmmm. Well, maybe if we spent a little time fixing our welfare system and developing better job placement programs that wouldn’t be a problem.

Maybe it’s that Americans are good at heart and caring enough to go and change the world for the better. Nope, wrong again. Not only are we in a war that no one wants to be in, but we have no grounds to be in one of the countries that we are in. We are there taking lives, just as they are taking ours. Our government doesn’t seem to care that our troops are one diying, killing some innocent people, and losing.

Our president wants to be able to have our troops do anything to P.O.Ws, not thinking that some of those people might just be doing a job as well. They could just be following orders. Does that not put us on the same level as the people we are fighting? That is another reason that we are not number 1.

 OK, so that may have been a rant. Getting back on the topic, our crime rate cannot make us better than anyone else, because it’s growing every day. We have hate crimes, murders, and people robbing little old ladies. Now, does that sound like something people from the best country would do?

Oh, what about the fact that Americans kill more Americans than any other country kills its own people, outside of war. Our death-by-hand-gun rate is unbelievable.

Like I said, I am an American, and I don’t hate my country. I love it. I am just really hurt by all the things that we do, and I am calling for a change. Just because we think we have it right doesn’t mean we do. So lets stop playing king of the world. Americans should open their eyes and see that the word “best” is an opinion.

We have the power to change the things we don’t like about our country. That is one of the good things about America.

So do it, get out there and vote. Write a letter to anyone and everyone. Let the government know how you feel, and remember they work for you. We pay them to run this country, so they should stop messing it up.