Happy Birthday America

For all that has gone on in our country, it's amazing that when you think it's time to move somewhere else, you're still hard pressed to imagine where.  As I've told my boys over the years, there are people in the world who would kill to have our worst day.  Not that an American with a brain tumor the size of a watermelon is therefore not really suffering or shouldn't complain.  It's just that we have so many wonderful blessings we can take for granted that barely rank fiction in many places in the world, and throughout most of human history.  That's why it's easy to forget how thankful we should be. Which might be part of the problem; a problem perhaps intentionally manufactured. 

UPDATE: Another example of the malaise among those forgetting our blessings comes from Where Peter Is. A young John Grosso demonstrates that common line of thought, especially among the Left, that says America deserves to be celebrated only if and when America votes Democrat and acts as the Left dictates, and not a minute before.  This is accomplished under that liberal umbrella that claims to be tolerant of everything but evil, while defining evil as anything that isn't liberal.  So they're not saying Americans must conform to their politics, they're merely saying America shouldn't celebrate in such evil times, which looks to all observers like being defined as not conforming to progressive politics.  While leftwing activists like you'll find at WPI are more flagrant with the notion that praiseworthy only means progressive, I fear it has filtered down into a common mentality, especially among younger generations.  An excuse to avoid sacrificing or committing to a cause unless it's worthy of me - and I can always make sure it never is worthy of me, so I needn't bother with those sacrifices and commitments to other causes.  

BTW, I've taken to visiting WPI semi-regularly to note the sparseness of Pope Leo articles compared to how you couldn't go five minutes without seeing new articles singing the praises of Pope Francis on a regular basis. I find that interesting, and yet I've noticed it across the liberal Catholic spectrum.  We'll see.