Written by: John Fedele

I am proud to be an American! There, I said it! The question is:how many of you are proud? How many of you believe all, or most of all, of what I believe? Don’t get me wrong. I am not better than you or any one else. I am average, middle class, God fearing, hard working, American, with a set of values passed on by my parents and their parents; other values compiled over the years through work experiences, personal relations; and some failures and successes. I used to think that was the makeup of all Americans. Those who were better off than I, worked a bit harder; studied a bit harder; and managed their time and money a bit better. I didn’t envy or dislike them. They were them and i was me. They made their bed to lay in and I made mine. They were happy and I was happy.

I grew up without a father figure. I didn’t miss what I didn’t have. I had a mother, a grandmother and grandfather, who guided me until my mother remarried. That life was normal to me. I knew no other way. I also remember we didn’t want, because we all did our part.

As a husband and father I tried to instill those same values in my children, and, for the most part, it worked, but there was one big obstacle. It was their peers, who didn’t have the same values as my children. Their parents wanted their children to have it better than they did growing up. That is a wonderful concept, but the problem was: they didn’t think their children had to work for success. They believed their children had the right to things without doing what was required to achieve that success. Worse, they had a lot of support. The Federal Government had a big turnover in those years. Old time politicians with old time values were replaced with a new breed. A breed that echoed the beliefs of my children’s peers parents. They believed everyone had a right to everything; believed the rich got that way because they took advantage of the poor. To correct that injustice, laws were enacted that punished the rich, and provided the poor with benefits that proved working was not necessary since government benefits provided an income just a bit less than a job would, after taxes and other deductions.

More and more people joined the ranks of the poor because the definition of poor changed whenever the government deemed it best for the party in control. As a result, more and more of the “so called rich” had to pay more and more in taxes to the government in order for those benefits to the poor could be financed. And so it continues today.

News flash: Soon there will not be enough of the “so called rich” to support the poor. Soon we will all be in some stage of poor. The poor, the poorer, and the poorest. Where will the money come from to assist us poor, and which class of poor will receive the most assistance?

The good news is: I believe there still is a majority of Americans who have the same values and beliefs as I. I only hope they will do their duty when elections roll around, and send home the parents of my children’s peers, and replace them with hard working, middle class, God fearing Americans with common sense, high values and morals.

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