Weep, America, for we have lost all of our sense of fairness.
We reach for weapons to kill, instead of using the power of words to persuade, to seek compromise. We are all consumed with “our rights” instead of the “rights of all.” We have forgotten that man, in community, must give away some rights to enjoy the blessings of liberty.
Sick minds capture the headlines of our major newspapers, while those of the brilliant earn a paragraph or two on the inside pages.
And, indeed, magnanimity today in politics is rare. Seldom is there the smile and the laugh after the debate is over; rare is the handshake.
Our interests are not of fellow man but ourselves. Ignorance and little minds shout down those who have true wisdom to offer us and we are doomed, if the course is not soon changed, to return (if we have not already done so) to the savage wilderness.
We can’t govern our own people, yet are involved in an illegal war (wars) to show that we can govern those who are thousands of miles, oceans away from our shores. We dedicate millions – no, billions of dollars – to destroy, but refuse to give pennies to the clinics that can help our sick. We have washed our hands. Our conscience is clear, we rationalize, because we are on the side of righteousness and God. But our hearts know better. Our flag is dishonored and the world has turned its back upon us. I shall not repeat here what others have already said and written so eloquently about the recent senseless shootings in Tucson.
The guilt does not rest upon the shoulders of one sick man – it rests upon our society. Upon all Americans who have turned aside and closed their eyes to what is happening on the streets of America today. The so-called zealous advocates of democracy are as responsible for these deaths as he who planned and carried out the executions of these innocent patriots.
And we want to plant our form of government – our way of life – on foreign soil! God forbid.
Let me tell you what the word “American” once meant to those across the sea. I have told this story to the hundreds who have attended my talks from coast to coast.
In one of my first trips outside of Soviet Armenia, our basketball team traveled to Vilnius (Lithuania) to compete in the national championships. We were housed along with the Georgians, Azerbaijani, Kirgizias, and Kazakhstan teams in, what I believe was, a stable. Shortly after being assigned a bunk, one of my teammates said they were providing other accommodations for our team. A bus pulled up and the Armenian contingent was taken to the newly opened Vilnius Hotel. Later I asked why the change of heart. I was told, “Someone on our team informed the Lithuanian official that there was an American on our team.”
The mere mention of the word “American” was once awed throughout the world. That we once earned that respect few will deny. The tombstones of our martyred are found in every corner of this earth, and there need no further evidence of how courageous our men and women are and have been throughout the history of this nation.
Can we ever again regain that confidence, that pride that once we as Americans enjoyed? Shall we rekindle that American spirit so precious to us all, and hold high that torch of freedom whose glorious beam of hope and liberty were coveted by nations.
My faith has always been in American and Americans.
It will never change.
This is the land of my birth and it will be the land of my final resting place.
