White Picket Fences

Pictures of isolation often include a fence. Yet that is the dream of America. Green summer lawns and white picket fences, bar-b-que in our backyards with the manicured grass in the front mirrors our lives inside. This is the American dream?

Once attained, and many have attained it, what does it really offer? Poor health care, job outsourcing, confused Christians and raving liberals, high divorce rates, alienation and a sense of fear. Max Webber was right when he said capitalism was an iron cage.

And now? Fear is its padlock.

When the VP campaigned and told the audience that there would be more terrorist attacks if they were not re-elected, did he not become a terrorist? Wasn't he using the tactic of fear to achieve his objective?

From Clorox Bleach, Lysol disinfectant, SARS and the West Nile Virus, fear is being created so that we can purchase our security and throw away the very thing the system says they're offering: freedom.

This is no conspiracy, it is the 11:00 news.

But I am free to not be afraid.

I am free to not worry if my neighbor ruins my green summer lawn, or a terrorist bombs my neighborhood. My destiny does not ultimately lie in their hands. If my destiny really does lie in the hands of the Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, than I am free to die.

The American dream does not define me nor does it own me. What have I to protect that is not already his?

If I am going to war against Iraq to oust Saddam, there may be some justice in that, though it is muddy at best. But the oil, the President and the politics raises too many questions and I have a hard time believing it is worth the death of thousands of people until those questions are answered.

What are we really protecting, Mr. Bush? Or are you trying to give Iraq the same unrealized dream that once was America? How can you give what we have not become? How can you teach democracy when we need teachers ourselves? I am not even wholly convinced democracy is the best policy. It is great for the rich and for those who can afford a voice in a capitalist nation, but it ignores the poor and despises the outcast.

But hey, as long as the front lawn is green and my family and I are comfortably secure and insulated from all those horrible things, who's to complain? Just be sure to shut the gate on your way out.