July 4th--a Day for Celebration and Reflection
 

Happy Independence Day! It is a great time to gather with family and friends and enjoy a fine summer day in the company of those important to you and your family. More importantly, in part because it rolls around only once per year, it is a time to reflect upon why the United States came to be; the sacrifices that have been made to gain and retain our freedom; and the basic precepts that precipitated both the founding of this country and the sacrifices made to maintain its existence and allow its great prosperity.

It is also the time to reflect on all the changes in our land during the last 9 or 10 months. No doubt there has been a large growth in the power and reach of the federal government. Are these changes envisioned in our Constitution? Was it what the Founding Fathers wanted when they bravely and at great personal risk declared our independence from England? Is it a good idea? What is the cost, as measured in personal freedom?

We have also spent (or obligated to spend) an unprecedented sum for what they call an economic "stimulus" package for the stated purpose of pulling us out of the recession. If this is true--then why has so little been spent months after its enactment? What is the impact of spending this amount of money on the generations to come? If we made this problem, isn't it our obligations to solve it without placing a burden on the children of the next generations? What does spending in these amounts do to our ability to respond to other (hopefully not self inflected) national emergencies, such as we faced in December 1941?

A year ago we knew that we did not have enough money to sustain Social Security and Medicare even to the end of the Baby Boomer generation. Why are we talking about enacting massively expensive new entitlements, when we can't even keep our current promises and have not taken a single step to do so?

These are very important times in America. Sometimes I fear that as a nation we are reliving the late 1840's. I pray that this is not the case. I pray for America and give thanks to God for the blessings of and to our country.