"Goodbye, America of My Youth"

                                                     
I have somewhere between now and a decade left of my life.  Before my mind becomes foggy with age, and my body becomes too weary to make the effort, I want to bid the America I knew a fond Goodbye.

Goodbye to an America where self discipline, morality and dedication to hard work resulted in personal and professional success.

Goodbye to an America that welcomed the immigrant but held a firm hand against invading hordes.

Goodbye to an America that the poet Carl Sandburg called the Breadbasket To The World.

Goodbye to an America that sometimes learns slowly, but eventually embraced the dreams of equality of a Martin Luther King

Goodbye to an America where its citizens all participated for the benefit of all and not the one we have now, where over half of the populace are given a free ride on paying taxes, where three generations of the "victim" class have lived on welfare, and a government check, for the their entire lives, and feel entitled to do so.

Goodbye to the America of De Toqueville, a Frenchman who toured America in the early 19th century and praised Americans as open, friendly, hard-working, who possessed strong moral values and who frowned upon sloth.

Goodbye to the American home, where we could leave home and leave our doors and windows open and  feel safe that nothing would be missing when we returned home.  And Goodbye to the time when we valued a house as a home and not something one placed "in hock" when we need more money to finance vacations and swimming pools and new furniture.

Goodbye to the America where we sat on our front porches and talked with our neighbors in the quiet of the evening.  Now we sit at a computer keyboard and spout hatred or pablum at a place called Facebook.

Goodbye to an America where our milk was delivered, fresh from the local dairy, to our door in ice cold glass bottles.

Goodbye to an America where the shouts of children at play outside could be heard from dawn to dusk, not the sound of
the artificial bleeps of a video game, where childhood obesity and early Adult onset diabetes was non-existent.

Goodbye to an America where Coke and Pepsi's came in bottles for ten cents...and goodbye to those nickel candy bars.

Goodbye to the America that would have told Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson to shut up....and would have told Shaun Hannity and Ann Coulter and Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to lower their voices.

Goodbye to an America that would have told the Black Community to "look in the mirror" and stop the Black on Black violence...and to stop sponging off Uncle Sam, before you start telling Whites how to think and behave.

Goodbye to an America that believed in John Kennedy's famous challenge; "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You, Ask instead What You Can Do for America".

Goodbye to an America that had a national debt small enough to comprehend what all those "zeroes" meant after the 16.

Goodbye to a political system that worked; where politicians knew the promise of "compromise" and not a political system that uses government largess to bribe and pimp for votes.

Goodbye to an education system that taught students math and science and grammar and spelling, and where parents and teachers worked in equal measure to make sure students obeyed the rules and achieved educational goals...all without the help of teachers unions and billions of wasted tax dollars.

Goodbye to a highway system where one could travel 3,000 miles East or West and not encounter crumbling bridges or highway cracks large enough to swallow a small car.

Goodbye to an America where China was something you ate dinner on...unlike now where China is now subsidizing your evening meal.

Goodbye to the America of my youth.  I will be eternally grateful to have grown up during that time.  I was so fortunate to live in the America where one could dream big dreams and have them come true, where "right" was right and "wrong" was wrong....and we clearly saw the difference.

Hello New America; where the Boy Scouts get sued, Girl Scouts get taught birth control at the age of six. Hello New America; where our most popular icons are rap artists, drug-loving entertainers and outlaws.
Hello New America; where only forty percent actually go out and vote but spend hours daily on the message boards complaining about corrupt politicians.
Hello New America; where less than 5% of the population want to serve in the military or in the Peace Corp.
Hello New America; where folks now believe they are entitled to the wealth of others, who studied harder and worked harder than they did.

Good luck to the New America:  I won't be around to see what you will become....I'm glad of that.

Goodbye to the America of My Youth.