America’s Latest Battle is Internal

This Memorial Day, it is fair to sum up the sacrifices of all military service personnel and civilians who lost their lives defending this county into a single word. That single word is Freedom.

Today, while our service men and women continue to “fight that good fight” for our continued freedom in a dozen hot spots around the globe, there’s another battle that’s being waged now on U.S. soil.

For years, we’ve heard the overused term “Culture War” as a convenient catchall for disagreements regarding everything from abortion; homosexual marriage; to ethics and morality as well as the religious right versus the liberal left – and on and on.

But that ground battle is moving beneath our feet in real time. The real “Culture War” is pitting the concept of free enterprise against bigger government.

The economic downturn of the past 18 months affected most Americans negatively, and the easy finger of blame points at Wall Street, with the easy fix being more government oversight and regulation.

Many banks and lending institutions did engage in predatory lending and then bundle and sell those loans in a fiscal game of “hot potato,” while credit rating agencies gave “AAA” stamps to the suspect loan bundles to further encourage the practice.

But that doesn’t eliminate the reality that dozens of thousands of people overextended themselves in homes they knew they couldn’t afford, and for more than 16 years both political parties pushed deregulation of the housing market so that anyone who wanted a home could qualify for easy loans. We’re all partially to blame, and we’re all paying the price to solve those problems. However, more and bigger government, is not the only solution.

Personally, I love this country and everything it stands for – but despite its problems, I’m not in a hurry to gut the free enterprise marketplace that helped make it great in favor of warmed over socialism with more bureaucracy.

For the past 250 years, the high price of freedom has been paid over and over by the armed forces and their families. Let’s not shortchange the premium they placed on freedom with anything less.