Changing

An old Bob Dylan song says times they are a changing and it is apropos for today’s world. This change has its roots in the Viet Nam War where disillusionment in government came to life. Over the next 20 years this feeling of unease was accelerated as the county slowly and painfully watched as the war on drugs and the war on poverty slipped away. On top of that came the realization that the government sponsored public education system was leaving behind our most vulnerable students while smaller areas like the post office and Amtrak floundered in sea of debt. Next came the public sector where employee benefits like pensions and health care were causing cities, counties and states to follow the federal government into the abyss of debt. The concept of spending more than what one earns spread to the private sector and now when we total up our long term obligations to future generations we are approaching the time when we will have to introduce an new word into the average person’s vocabulary and that word is quadrillion. And now we are confronted with the final straw in the governments back and that is Obamacare. The belief that the government could solve problems started with the great victory in WW 11 but as the deficits piled up year after year times started a changing. When Reagan said that the government is not the solution but the problem he stuck a cord deep inside the people and that has come alive over the past thirty years and people are now awake and ready to turn the ship of state around. As people watch the huge apartment complexes known as, “the projects”, or what I like to call the modern day equivalent of the reservation, come tumbling down overwhelmed by crime and addiction they began to have doubts. When year after year we see the inner cities crumble both literally and figuratively as the gap in education grows ever wider we have doubts. When individuals lose their dignity as they are forced to rely more and more on government aid and when words like personal responsibility are considered racist we have doubts. When young boys grow up with no role models and young girls seek the safety of their own apartments by having babies we have doubts. When the government bails out big banks and big corporations while people lose their homes, we have doubts. When elected officials care more about party than country, we have doubts. When so many see their only hope for the good life is winning the lottery we have doubts. But in the midst of all these doubts there is still hope because there is a changing. It is the awakening of the individual spirit that made this country great and it will arise again like the Phoenix. It is the realization that each of us must learn to take responsibility for our lives and reach for the brass ring. In this great land, the home of the free and brave it can be done and it starts with a change in attitude. We must get back the can-do attitude we had when I was growing up. We hear in the news every day that we have just been through the worst economic times since the Great Depression but those people came through and built the greatest generation and it can be done again because times are a changing.