The relaxing sound of machine gun fire in the distance…
While sitting on the porch of my parent’s house a constant pop-pop-pop sound can be heard in the distance, about a mile away. Living near an Army base, the sounds of soldiers training can be heard at all times of the day and night. Let me first say that in real life, machine guns don’t sound at all like they do on TV. They sound more like pebbles hitting a metal garbage can or black cat fire crackers (I’m sure that up close, pebbles hitting a garbage can would not be a good description).

Now, some people hear the sounds of guns and are fearful because they do not have peace. Here in the USA, we are not under attack from gun toting men. There are no tanks in our streets or bombs falling around us. The guns that I hear firing are not firing at me, they are firing to protect me.

However, it is foolish to deny that we are at war. We are at war in several different ways. First, the war on terror is real. Some people criticize Bush’s motivation for our presense in the middle east, but he had no choice. We were attacked first and unlike previous wars, there was no nation directly responsible. Instead, we had to seek out those who allied with, supported and harboured our enemies. We could not turn the other cheak in this case because that would send a message of weakness. We had to show that the USA is strong and we will not sit around while our people are killed.

Now, we are also at war in another way… I will save this subject for another day but I won’t keep you in suspence: America’s future will likely be cut short because of the increasing trend towards anarchy. If we continue to cater to the mentality of, “I have the right to do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t directly hurt anyone else,” we will soon be (and already we are a little) fed up with the lawlessness. People are already cynical saying, “If you have enough money|influence|whatever you can get away with anything.” This feeling of injustice will grow until finally, someone with strength will rise to power and voter’s will plead, “Do whatever, just fix our nation!” and at that point we will cease to be a democracy, trading our rights and freedoms for… I do not want to find out.