A Direct Question – Capuano: ‘Where Do We Want to Go?’

At the East Boston Main Streets breakfast last week Congressman Mike Capuano asked: “Where do we want to go as a country?”

As usual, Capuano was banging the nail on its head by asking such a question.

As a champion of working class families, Capuano tends to ask important questions regarding the road we are going down and whether or not that is the right road to be on at this time.

He is wondering, as we are wondering, where are we heading.

However, he might have asked: Who are we as Americans today? What are we all about? And are we OK being who we are?

Americans today remain among the most decent, caring, curious, hard working, best educated, best housed, people in the world. For the most part we are rich while the largest part of the world’s population is poor and struggling. Even our poor are rich when compared with the poor living in Africa, India and China. We are powerful and we project our power socially, morally, economically and militarily throughout the world.

As a nation, we have become a people who do not want to face economic reality.

We’ve buried ourselves in a money pit type of hole with two ten-year wars – Iraq and Afghanistan.

The recession didn’t help, either.

Now we are dealing with high unemployment and the appearance that it is all over for our nation as the leader of the world.

Our economy is struggling. Our government appears a bit out of it. The doom and gloomers are having a big say these days.

America, above all, remains the conscience of the world, the world’s best and strongest democracy.

But we have become a people who are not willing to sacrifice anything to make things right.

On the other hand, American blood spilled in Iraq and Afghanistan is an enormous loss for this nation and for the parents of those who have died bravely to help those two rather helpless nations.

Perhaps there has been enough sacrifice for those people in those faraway lands and that we need more to be a people slightly more concerned about ourselves, and our future and our economic well being?

Congressman Capuano certainly asked the right questions last week.

All of us should busy ourselves with thinking about and articulating where we want to go, who we want to be and how we can change the course of history to help ourselves out.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *