“I don’t wanna read the book, I’ll watch the move…” so sings John Foreman of Switchfoot.  And for that matter, so sings humanity.  We’ve lost something.  We’ve lost our desire to think.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know we think we think.  But we never think what we thought we thought.  Confused yet?  Thinking yet?  We believe that if we think too much, we lose our emotions, or our creativity, or something else.  We believe we will be big, boring, brains, and that’s all.  But there is beauty in logic.  Poetry, art, music, film, speech, and those who are truly great expressing themselves in those media require thought.  We’ve bought the lie that says to be great, we must turn off our brains and live from our heart.  They are not to be separated (our heart and head, that is)!  It is high time that we reclaim the use of our brains.

Sleeping giant...more like comatose obese giant.  What have we become?  America at one time was a country of producers, now all we do is consume, consume, consume.  It could very well be our downfall.  The truth is, we are apathetic and idle.  We seem to have the majority of the world's college-educated, but I'm reminded of the homeless guy in Amsterdam who spoke perfect English to me (by the way, how did he know I was an American...I guess we have a look...or a smell).  I guess we've become really American.  I mean, we want it all.  We want lower taxes, but more governmental help in all areas of life.  We want speed and efficiency when we travel by air, but we also want to be safe.  We want a strong economy at home, but we also want to help the underpriviledged around the globe.  We want good foreign relations, but a strong war on terror.  We want everyone to live in peace, but it had better be our kind of peace! 

Soon, we'll be electing our next president and we have two candidates who both seem to be strong leaders, but will lead this country in opposing directions.  I'm not going to show my hand and support one particular candidate.  But we must all ask ourselves as we go to the polls (and hopefully before) "Who will give us everything we want?"  Or is that even the best thing for us?

Our next president will have significant influence over policy in this country.  But Who this country is will be up to whom it has always been up to: us, it's citizens.  It is time for us to leave our apathy and insatiable consumerism and do something more, be something more, care more, learn more, share more.  Vote well.