An
Unpublished Letter to Los Angeles Times
It was the best of times. It was the worst of
times.
Though it was one of the most powerful nations
on Earth, their proud country's standing among the fraternity
of nations was sinking. Though they tried their best to ignore
it, their years of having fought costly wars and arming
themselves to the teeth were slowly but surely leading them into
bankruptcy.
Inefficiency and corruption were increasingly
the rule, not the exception. There were two systems of justice:
Draconian for the powerless, moot for the powerful.
The extravagances of the few came at the expense
of the stagnation and downright poverty of the many, for whom
the necessities of life -- food, shelter, and health care of
sufficient quantity and quality -- were becoming luxuries.
Insidiously, in spite of their hard work and
entrepreneurial risks, many in the middle class found themselves
losing ground: They feared, for good reason, that their children
would not be as well off as they were.
Pleas for compassion -- not only from the
desperate poor but also from the disillusioned middle class and
even some of the wisest and most humane of the rich or powerful --
were met with indifference, platitudes, or downright
contempt by all too many of the leaders of their country.
Dissent was all too often considered unpatriotic at best,
blasphemous at worst. Somehow the God most of them worshiped,
who Himself had walked upon the Earth as but a humble peasant,
was supposed to have ordained this sordid social order.
And what was the result of this intolerable
situation? That remains to be seen. I pray we learn from the
history of The French Revolution and are not doomed to repeat
it.