As I sat watching a documentary about Appalachia, it occurred to me that the United States of America is suffering from an identity crisis.  Who are we?  Where did we come from and where are we going.  I come from a small town in Illinois, but I am not going to be buried there when I die.  So I have nowhere to call home in the land of my birth.  It’s not only a lack of culture that this country suffers from; it is a lack of identity.  We have come from somewhere else beyond the edges of this country.  Yet we have no identity.

We will soon be electing a leader for this country.  But it’s not the issues that will decide how we will cast our vote.  It is our identity, who we are, that will determine what sort of person best represents the character of this country.  The question of, “what do we want?” is insufficient.  The question needs to be, “Who are we?”  The United States seems to have elected someone who represents the wants of the masses, rather than a leader who identifies with the distinctiveness of the country.  What is American-ness?

We are a unique country that has discarded the cultural genesis from which it came.  The music, visual art, sports, and technology have all somehow come from other parts of the world and amalgamated into what is known as Americana.  However, within the last 20 years, culture has abandoned what truly identified American identity.  Somehow, popular culture dictates that our collective sexual desires are the very essence of what defines America.  How have we slipped so far down the cultural scale?

The leadership most needed in this country is to illuminate what it is to be American.  We don’t need a leader who will grant us all bread and circus.  We all know what we need.  What is important is to know who my brothers and sisters are my fellow Americans.  What makes me identifiable with them?  How do I know that these people are Americans?  We have lost our real leader the one who has truly created freedom for all mankind.  That one is God.  We ought to turn to Him, ask for his mercy, thank him for all of our blessings and plead for his divine providence.