Posted By Christina M on January 14, 2010

The other day I saw the words “What’s wrong with America” somewhere, and it got me to thinking. It’s easy to blame today’s woes entirely on politics. The left thinks it’s because of the right, the right thinks it’s because of the left, and everyone agrees that we have problems. Maybe politics play a part (in fact, I feel pretty certain they do) but I don’t think it’s right to just blame it on politics and then move on. I think that’s really just passing the buck. At least, it relieves us of having to think about the other causes.

What is wrong with America?

We live in a land of dichotomies.

We offer minority scholarships so that they can go to college, but we don’t improve their elementary school education to prepare them for college.

We preach against child abuse while protecting, even defending the right to abuse babies to death in the womb.

We believe strongly in the value of the individual while using the school system to squeeze all individuality out of children with standardized testing and standardized curriculum. (So much standardized curriculum that there is little room left for individualized learning.)

We believe in government of the people, by the people, and for the people, while electing career politicians who do not have to live with the consequences of the laws they pass. (I did say politics were a part, just not the whole thing.)

We talk about caring for the poor, but we look to entities and institutions to correct the problem for us.

We talk a good talk, but we do not walk a good walk. We are so busy institutionally caring about people we throw persons under the bus to get them out of the way of our agendas.

What’s wrong with America? We are so tied to our philosophies, ideas, and theories that we forgot how to care for those that don’t help our agendas along. We seem to have forgotten that what goes on in our own brains isn’t nearly as important as the human beings that are harmed by being denied education, safety, or food.

We have forgotten to ache when an innocent person is harmed by our ideals. When we care for the poor but don’t feed the hungry (as a person, not as an institution)… when we care for children but support their killing… when we care for the underprivileged but settle for throwing tests at them to “fix” the problem… we aren’t really caring. We are talking a nice, pretty, hypocritical talk. Until we stop being hypocrites, I do not believe our problems in the United States will improve.

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