Having heard on radio President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech; and having spent three years on Pacific islands “avenging” Pearl Harbor; and having spent the next 50 years watching what has been happening to America since then, I feel somewhat qualified to speak my piece.

Since the tragedy of the World Trade Center four years ago, I have closely followed newspaper articles, TV reports, and face-to-face interviews, and I find subsequent events not only extremely sad but also chillingly predictable. Because 9/11 never seemed to be an isolated incident, but more of a red flag response to the troublesome direction in which America has been drifting, particularly our involvement in the Middle East dispute.

I use the word drifting intentionally because, for all our expertise, progress, power and prestige, we have slid blindly into the trap of forgetting, or ignoring, what this country was, and what it is now becoming.

A while back, Leonard Pitts, columnist for the Miami Herald, recently made this observation: “The enemy is not just Arab terrorism or the Muslim religion. It is also fanaticism, extremism, intolerance, and hate.” Pitt’s reaction is certainly a human one; but he is only half right.

Here’s the other half.

After watching the movie, Pearl Harbor”, Pamela Ricco, a Tallahassee resident, said: “I believe that those who lived and died defending America did not do so to protect themselves, but to protect our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Those who have gone before us defending the freedoms we cherish did so because they believed in protecting our future, not avenging the past.”

And there, I think, lies the difference in the generational mindset, and how America’s vision of its destiny has been changed, perhaps forever.

Looking back over the past half-century, I have come to see this change more clearly. And the conclusions I’ve reached may have something to offer the Americans who come after me.

My belief is that although we should not, as Pitt correctly stated, let re-living tragic events like 9/11 bring us to the doorstep of “fanaticism, extremism, intolerance, or hate”, but neither should we allow it to obscure from our view the more subtle nation-destroyers: arrogance, hypocrisy, naivete, and greed:

The kind of arrogance that makes us think we know better than our founding fathers who consistently warned us about getting involved in foreign disputes that are not of our making, our concern, or in our nation’s interest.

The kind of hypocrisy that enables us to justify sending humanitarian aid to foreign nations, then punishing the few “bad guys” by dropping bombs on many of the poor people we just fed. 

The kind of naivete that blinds us to the fact that open borders and unrestricted immigration is slowly turning America into a multi-cultural, Third World sewer more damaging to this country than global warming.

The kind of greed that makes businesses go overseas for cheap labor, thus robbing hard-working American families of needed jobs, causing more economic instability, and making a joke out of the Made in the USA label.

I say all this, not from a desire to be a know-it-all, but only as an observer who has seen the transformation of our nation from a viewpoint clearly visible only to Americans of my vintage.

Today, mired down in the MiddleEast,MAH four years after the New York tragedy, I, too, say God Bless America. But I also say something more to the point: God Help America.

James T. Moore
http://jamestmoore.us/