Has our culture lost its mind?

Watching the sniping and bickering of the political candidates during this election year, it seems to me many people have lost their minds.

If you lived next to a neighbor who was known to have been closely aligned with the KKK for 20 or more years, would you call that neighbor a friend or would you steer as far away from that person as possible?

Likewise, if a person's pastor reflected a deep hatred towards one race and yet that person remained a steadfast supporter of that same bigoted pastor, what would it say about such a person?

If you knew a spouse from a well established married couple who had the true blessing of attending the highest levels of schools in this nation, was a millionaire, lived a very rich material life and yet publicly proclaimed they were not proud of the nation that provided the system for such prosperity, would you want to befriend such a person?

If you listen to politicians publicly proclaim their love for and defense of the weakest in our society, while also supporting the daily extermination of several thousand of the weakest humans in our midst, the unborn, would it not be fair for a rational person to see the incredible hypocrisy and immorality in that position?

Ultimately, what does it say about us when we are willing to ignore our own convictions and beliefs in order to feel as if our chosen party won an election? How does voting with such recklessness help advance the overall goodness, morality, strength and mission of this great nation?

Throughout history, cultures and nations tend to get exactly what they deserve and exactly what they request from their leaders.

If we, as normal citizens, refuse to stay true to our own beliefs and convictions, then we should not feel surprised when our political leaders behave in the same manner. When we complain about our political leaders and their seeming lack of convictions, morality and ethics, should we not be examining ourselves?

In all of this, it is important that we recall the words of Abraham Lincoln, "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

We the people, tend to forget that we elect men and women to represent us, not to manipulate and dictate to us, and if we allow ourselves to be run by corrupt individuals, then this nation shall indeed perish from the earth.

Thomas P. Johnson

Streamwood