FAMILY TIES----COUNTRY TIES

There is amongst my family of eight siblings, blessings that few people get to enjoy. It’s the fact that some of us are now approaching our middle seventies and we’re all still alive and relatively healthy. But that’s only one of the blessings. The other is all of the grandkids and great grandkids that have come along from these unions are for the most part, good people making their way in this world. My grandfather had a saying. “He said remember Mike, when you raise your son, you raise your sons, son.” I think at least for my family, the proof is in the pudding and I’m not trying to be self-serving here. Remember that grand father I mentioned. That’s where it all started for me and that’s where the credit is due.

Another blessing comes in the fact that we as siblings still all love and respect each other and when one of us has problems we rally around each other and try to help, despite the fact that in many ways we have chosen far different paths in life. We don’t often get hung up on the details though, because in the end, no matter what happens-- she is my sister and he is my brother and we don’t let things like that unravel us. My dad was a big believer in the good book. The one that says, “You are your brothers keeper” “Judge not lest you be judged.”

Last month I listened to a news story where a father killed his son because he wouldn’t pay for cable television. I can’t fathom what brings anyone to the point to kill their own flesh and blood. The news this morning has a high school boy plotting to start another school massacre and right here in old Minnesota nice. You need other examples--- they’re a dime a dozen and they come along everyday. In most cases these are young people who grew up left to there own means. Kids are like electricity. They take the path of least resistant’s and the results are often shocking.

There is a vigilante attitude growing in this country. People are fed up with all of the rules and regulations and they are starting to fear their government. They don’t trust that they or their families will be safe anymore. They can’t understand how we can’t keep drugs or illegal aliens from coming into the country but yet profess to keep terrorists out. They can’t understand how we can go on telling the rest of the world how to live and yet the rest of the world hates us for it. We incarcerate more people then any other country in the world but yet people are still buying guns to defend their families and homes. Something is terribly wrong.

I am not sure we can recover some sense of normalcy in this country anymore. I think the pendulum has swung to far. I think our problems are insurmountable both fiscally and morally. Our government seems to be infected with the same greed and corruption that is tearing our society apart so we have the blind leading the blind. This is how revolutions get started, when the people have had enough. Maybe we need another big war to bring us back together. It worked sixty years ago. But then after all of the bloodshed and smoke went away, we took that hard earned victory, that had made us loved and respected by most of the world and peed it away. No, another war would be a bad idea. Just another band-aid on a huge, huge, wound.