Inconsequential Ramblings

*Note: This post is in reference to nothing in particular. It's just a thought I had in a moment of reflection. Please remember to clear your ears and decend slowly, to avoid complications from the increased depth of this post.*

Sometimes I get the feeling that when we grow up, America will have a lot to apologize for. We mean well. But, power and prosperity has come so quickly, so easily to us as a nation that, like a spoiled child, we have become arrogant. We are caught up and consumed by ourselves, our views, our way of doing things. It's been working very well for us, but we should not assume that the same formula applied in a different setting will yield the same result. As a nation, we tend to be impulsive, short-sighted, maybe a little cocky. We know nothing about patience. America does not know the meaning of time.

Before my aunt tries to skin me for being unpatriotic, I should clarify that I'm not saying "the American way" doesn't work, or is bad. Quite the opposite. It just also occurs to me that our nation is very young. If you step waaay back, and look at things in terms of centuries or millennia, instead of decades (as we are wont to do), America went from being a wild, isolated, undiscovered chunk of land to a world power and economic juggernaut overnight. But what goes up, must come down. History sings the same song down through the ages, "the rise and fall of nations". What is to keep us from flying apart under the strain of our own momentum? Just a thought.