This past year, my best friend and I have been emailing each other a question each morning. His question to me yesterday was, "If you were running for President, what would you say during the debate."  It led me to this blog entry:

Seven years ago this month our country was attacked in one of the most vicious despicable acts in the history of the world. I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that we came together as a nation in September of 2001. The bad news is that since then, we've become divided. The frank truth that no one wants to say aloud is that because of our division, the terrorists are winning. I'll repeat it; the terrorists are winning.  Oh, they're not winning in Iraq. They're not winning in Afghanistan where we've been fighting all these many years. They're winning because we have been operating as an “us against them” mentality. Not just “us against the terrorists,” no no. “Us Against Them” here at home. No sooner will a Democrat propose a plan of action, than ten Republicans line up to oppose it. No sooner will a Republican sponsor a bill than ten Democrats plot to block it. No sooner will someone speak out in the workplace for a particular candidate than several friends or coworkers will attack that candidate or that person for being “too far left” or “too far right.”

Maybe in better times, this system, this way of operating was acceptable, but in times like these, when major institutions are failing, when people can’t make their house payments, when our government can’t respond to emergency situations, when bridges are collapsing, when schools are not educating, hospitals are not healing and banks are not lending, we must face reality. Our system is broken and little tweaks and pokes are not going to fix it.

So how did we get here? This didn’t happen overnight. This didn’t happen over the course of one or two presidential administrations. We are in the mess that we're in today because over the past few decades, as technology has improved and information is passed along faster, ironically enough, we've allowed ourselves to become more and more divided. We've become so overly focused on the minutia of "battleground states," "same sex marriage" and “which celebrity is in rehab,” that we've missed the big picture of digging in, making sacrifices, working hard and developing new technologies.

I have a question for the auto makers. Why has the personal computer gone from being a room-sized million-dollar product down to a laptop, $300 product in less than a generation but 100 years later, we're still using an engine that runs on a fuel source we not only know to be limited and pollutes the environment, but one which our demand can only be met from a part of the world we know to be volatile and hostile? It doesn’t make sense.

We've become lazy. We've become self-centered and commercially irresponsible. We’ve overspent and underworked. We want to have our oil and use it too. We want to have our high-wage jobs and export them too. We want to win our wars and watch them too.  It doesn't work that way! During World War II there were scrap metal drives, there were paper drives, there were curfews. Hell, there were even CHOCOLATE RATIONS. People understood that to fight evil, they had to tighten their belts and band together with their family, friends and neighbors. As Americans, we've done that before and unless we do it again, we're not going to pass along the same lifestyle to future generations. It's just that simple and that ugly, folks.

That's a lot of bad news, huh?  Well there's more good news in there somewhere. You see, back when America was willing to make sacrifices, and I'm not speaking now of World War II, I'm referring to September 11th, we all felt a sense of community, accomplishment, empowerment. We were able to understand how our forefathers, armed mostly with muskets, faced off against the world’s most powerful military at the time, won, and then forged a new nation. We were able to comprehend how a country made up of mostly farmers were able to transform into the most powerful armed forces in the world, defeat Hitler and then rebuild our enemies into stable, productive and beneficial allies. And these dramatic transformations didn’t take hundreds of years like they did throughout history with other nations. They happened within just a decade. 1776 to 1786. 1941 to 1951.

A decade. Ten years. Where will America be in 2018? Will we be fighting wars that are a lost cause and chasing ghosts through the caves of Pakistan? Will we be in debt, struggling to make ends meet while the rich get “guiltier” and the poor get angrier? Will we be analyzing what effect some lobbyist’s “spin” will have in a key “battleground state” or which celebrity’s reality show is higher in the Neilson ratings? Or can we put all that aside, roll up our sleeves and come together over a common goal? The American Dream. Remember her?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

When I was a boy, my Italian great grandfather sat me down on his lap and told me how his father punched him when he informed his dad he was immigrating to America. My great grandmother, who lived just one village over, left everything and everyone to come through Ellis Island for a better life. Today, in many parts of the world, people are still fighting and dreaming of a better life in America. As we work with our friends and our neighbors to provide a better life for our children, for the next generation, it is our duty, our responsibility, and our privilege to keep that American Dream alive. 

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

God bless this country. God bless America and God bless you all.