WASHINGTON D.C. —With broken government being the theme for the week, you’d wonder if you are still in the United States of America. Luckily our nation is still supreme despite a long list of mediocre if not bad presidents and a congress that swings from one political extreme to the other. However, if you are to remember the vitriol candidate Obama’s wife Michelle Obama received from the political right when she said during the campaign of 2008, “That for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” You could easily forget the lambasting she received from people who stated, they were always proud of their country. These same people are now ashamed and have no pride in their nation and are calling it ruined and stolen from them.

It’s always been amazing to see the group that is out of power be the loudest. That’s what we are enduring now. The political right are unhappy by what they see as a changing demographic. We have a Hispanic woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, we have an African American president in power and a Speaker of the House of Representatives, who is a liberal woman from the West Coast. It’s all scary to a group of people who for many years, if not forever, have never seen power taken out of their hands directly and placed in the hands of people who look different than our founding fathers.

African Americans lived for a century under Jim Crow laws in the U.S., under presidents, congressmen, senators and judges who very often had ties to the KKK or were card-carrying members themselves. Blacks survived without uttering the words, “He scares me.” Now we hear it daily from the political right. It’s very telling and very sad.  Until such rhetoric changes, there is no ability to solve our nation’s serious economic issues as a group, with fear overcoming people who are supposed to be part of the solution. Mature adults can disagree on policy issues without using scare tactics. I disagree with most of President Obama’s policies as I had President Bush’s, however I never made either one a boogey man. This is highly childish and counterproductive.

Maybe this is the time that the young people in our nation will use this opportunity of change to become more accepting and throw out all the old bigotries of our nation’s historical beginnings and those that have continued throughout the 20th century in America. The 21st century has seen changes that have not always been good, but they are not as bad as the people out of power right now would have you to believe. We are still the world’s moral, economic and military superpower. We remain the nation that is called to duty when it’s time of disasters or the wars we fight against radical Islam, which no European power stands today to fight against.

We are facing looming deficits as far as the eye can see. However, we have faced one under each president we’ve had with the exception of one in our nation’s 300-year history. Do not allow the negative people who simply hate the face of our leadership today to dissuade any of you young Americans from becoming involved in public service. The shouting and screaming you hear is deafening, but these are people who refuse to change with the times and who were in power for as long as the nation has been here. We absolutely must get our government deficits under control, we must not take on further entitlements to bankrupt our nation’s future; however, do not allow these negative people who have joined Tea Parties and also are just obstructionists to change make you believe that you are no longer in the greatest nation ever in existence in the history of this planet. With the exception of lost continent of Atlantis, which has been considered a myth, compared to our neighbors and even our allies, we are still more blessed and much better off than anyone else in the world.

Please remember our troops who fight in harm’s way on the front-lines of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on a daily basis. Make a difference, make a donation to the USO or help some soldier’s family this week. Don’t allow the negative complainers to make you forget we have the bravest men and women on the planet fighting for our rights and those of freedom loving people, some of which cannot fight for themselves.

God bless America!