Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross

Americans don’t wake up in the morning and say, “What can I do for my country and my community today.” Our patriotic activity is limited to one or two days a year. Here are some of the ways the average American is failing the country:

Non-participation in public affairs is something almost everybody is guilty of today. Voting counts, but not for much. We usually don’t know what or who we are voting for. We are just letting money and power run society today without standing up our voices and our bodies to say “no” and to show how it must be done instead.

There are only two main political points of view that are given prominence in the country: MAGA and Democrat. Hmm… there are 175 million voting age minds running around the country today, but we can only come up with two political party platforms that we can choose from to get behind and vote for? That is absurd and destructive of academic freedom, religious freedom, press freedom and freedom of speech. Other democratic nations have up to a half dozen or more political parties represented in their legislatures. Not so in speech-hating America!

Today we build things rather than people. We have a huge construction industry in America devoted to building new offices and warehouses, building and maintaining infrastructure, erecting new luxury housing, etc. You get the picture. But we have few who are teaching “law-related education” to youth, and history, political science and law to adults. That kind of education in early America was the pathway that led to perfection in this country.

Who can miss the wholesale conversion of our society from a communitarian “one for all, and all for one” philosophy of life to a radical libertarian “do whatever the hell you want to do to whoever the hell you want to do it to” philosophy. In other words, evil has become good in 21st century America. We either condone, promote or worship evil at every turn and think it is necessary to protect “freedom.”

Participation in public affairs today is largely for the wrong reasons. Behind every election sign up in your neighborhood is a person running for office for reasons other than saving families, neighborhoods, communities, rule of law and the country. You can be sure few if any of those candidates has ever read and studied the document we like to call the Constitution. They are in it for money, fame, power or to spite someone they don’t like.

One of the clearest signs our citizens have given up on the nation is our burgeoning homeless population across the land. We didn’t have this problem when our grandparents and great-grandparents were in charge. We just don’t care about people like they did.

A related sign is the massive backing off of our responsibility to bring children into the world, or alternatively, to help raise the huge population of lost, abandoned, unadopted or neglected “orphans” of our society, including the orphans of divorce. They need help. We are not giving it to them either privately or publicly.

Another huge sign is despotism in government. When citizens refuse to participate, they are essentially handing over their personal, God-given rights and powers to ambitious individuals who are not capable of handling all that fame, money and power wisely without screwing over the entire community.

There is little devotion to personally helping citizens in the community other than our own family members. In our churches we will raise up our fellow parishioners when they are hurting, lonely or straying from a good path. Not so in our broader communities. We not only do not love our neighbors, we have no earthly desire to get to know them. How can we help them if we do not know them?

It is a fact today that dogs are our best friends. Most see this as a good thing for dog owners and dogs, which it is. However, people today don’t walk with their families or walk with their neighbors. There are many fewer baby strollers and many fewer family and social walking groups than there are dogs strutting the streets with their caretakers. Why can’t human beings be our best friends?