I cannot tell a lie

I remember the old story about President George Washington cutting down a cherry tree and admitting to his mistake later on. He must be turning in his grave if he is seeing the many lies that exist in politics and in every other arena for that matter.

I am not even sure that the George Washington's anecdote is true. I know that many of us like to believe our forefathers and fore mothers were honest beings. I do not know if the story about the cherry tree is told in schools anymore but the truth is that we must restore the concept of honesty and truth. We are now seeing how intelligent people were deceived by the culprits of the financial industry and the like. Every day we learn about another multimillion dollar scheme that not only affects those directly snuffed by fraudulent behavior but all of us are suffering from an image crisis. We need to restore trust amongst ourselves first. Then, we must restore trust in our country's institutions. Each of us can contribute to the task of cleaning up our global image.
The way I see it the logical place to begin is in the home. Parents are the most influential in a child's life. They must be the role models first. If we want our children to care about the planet, we must recycle the first plastic bottle. If we want them to learn within their means then we must say no to an extra electronic gadget they may ask you to get them. That money can be saved for college or some other worthy cause. The truth is that we as a nation need to restore our priorities and be true to what matters.

For example, we complain about education in general and our debilitated infrastructure but what are we willing to give up to restore it and rebuild it. We hate the inconvenience of the delays on the roads when workers are repairing our roads. Our schools are crumbling brick by brick in many states across the United States. We tolerate it. We complain about it but what are we doing about it? The truth is that communities can come up with creative alternatives to help refurbish the severely dilapidated buildings where our children and teachers spend up to seven hours a day. We call children and young minds our most valuable resources. Yet, we do little about prioritizing the rebuilding of our schools. We allow our health system to fail our citizens. We punish hard working people with foreclosures.

America needs to stare itself in the mirror of the future and say enough is enough. I cannot continue to tell lies. We all need to look at the budgets, bids, economic proposals, tax base, stimulus grants, and our legislators. President Obama said it best, "Yes, we can." We can stop lying to ourselves and realize that we chopped down a lot of things these past eight years. Someone has to fess up and make our forefathers and foremothers proud.