AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICANS!

AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICANS!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© Good Friday, March 21, 2008

Some twenty years ago, I retired as a corporate executive who had worked over a good share of the world. Since that time, I have published hundreds of articles and several books on the subject of leaderless leadership as I have experienced it in my corporate career. I have witnessed a pusillanimous slide of American society into cultural ambivalence.

Here we are in the most important season of the Christian faith, and educators, government officials, corporate leaders, religious leaders and citizens in general are waffling.

There appears to be no clear sense in this United States of America as being a Christian nation. Christian pilgrims founded America, the Founding Fathers were Christians, even the Hussein mercenaries and the British troops of King George III during the American Revolution were Christian. Our history is that of a Christian people.

Today, more than 80 percent of the American population of more than 300 million claims to be devout or tacit Christians, while more than 80 percent of Americans claim to believe in God.

Now, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution separate church from state, while giving all Americans the right to express their religious preference.

Still, these minority religions are residents of a Christian country. This is not their country if they do not assimilate themselves into the American language, the American value system, and the American system of law and order, as this is a society of laws and not men.

What may be construed as magnanimous tolerance by suborning the American value system to placate minorities is, in fact, demonstrating leaderless leadership. Such indecision throws American society off course and away from what has made it great. It is the Christian religion, the Protestant work ethic, and the Calvinistic determination to be all we can be that has produced a society second to none.

Imagine if you will, if this American population of more than 80 percent Christians were to boycott merchants, the economy would collapse; if it boycotted work, the country would come to a standstill; if it boycotted the public school system it, too, would collapse.

Yet, in a strange way, when a sliver of the population takes a stand in opposition to an open expression of the American Christian culture, merchants, workplaces and schools capitulate in a frantic effort not to offend, disregarding the majority population without compunction.

Merchants do this by no longer putting up Christmas trees, but holiday trees; no longer saying, "Merry Christmas" to customers, but "Happy Holidays"; no longer publishing Christmas cards but Holiday cards; no longer celebrating the Birth of Jesus, but having an end of the year celebration. The schools and workplaces and the government, indeed, the media are equally complicit in this rush away from our cultural roots.

Today. it is Good Friday, the day that Jesus died on the Cross, a day, traditionally, that schools were closed, workplaces and government offices, too, but no longer for fear of offending this or that minority that has chosen to take residence in this Christian country.

Should you dispute this being a Christian culture on the basis that all religions are legitimate you beg the question of America's history and culture, making it a moot point. It is the identity of the American character.

Unfortunately, for wont of leadership, we have an identity issue here. The seeds of our society have sprung many weeds that are choking out the life of our identity. The American character and its content has been diminished like that person who always says to your face what you want to hear, and does the same to the next person, and the next, until the face is faceless without any distinguishable characteristics.

Sadly, the American character has become faceless, purposeless, and shameless in regard to the question of what it is, why it is, how it became so, and what it has lost.

Every minority should have the same rights as the American majority. At the same time, the minority has a choice to make: assimilate themselves into American society, and adopt American values, and profit from what has made America great, or leave. Instead, too frequently, some in the minority community denigrate the American way, and blaspheme the United States in their native language publications, while experiencing the largesse and comfort of American society.

Americans have an amazing capacity to absorb disrespect. Respect is something you must earn, but you don't earn respect without roots: that is, without beliefs, values, and cultural doctrines that identify you as American.

This is my worry. I have several grandchildren, many teenagers, some ready to take their place in society, and others who already have. My grandchildren are essentially without religious convictions, without belief in anything. The major beliefs of the teenagers are in their electronic toys or some fantasy television programs, while those about to graduate from college, or now in the workplace are principally interested in "making it" in an amoral society.

For this, we have lost something. These young people are in or soon will be taking leadership positions in society, and if they don't know who they are, have little sense of identity, chances are they will try to be everything to everybody and end up being no one to everyone, and mainly to themselves.

The Christian culture is our center, and without it, we have no roots.

We cannot blame these young people for this predicament. It is American society that has shrunk from its culture and its roots, giving these young people little guidance or sense of identity much less direction in the most challenging era ever known to this nation. It is a time to take inventory and then action to redress this wrong.

----------------------
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
6714 Jennifer Drive
Tampa, FL 33617-2504

Dr. Fisher is a former corporate executive of Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. He is a trained chemist and chemical engineer who has worked and lived in South America, Europe and South Africa aside from his roots in Clinton, Iowa, and his present residence is Tampa, Florida with his wife Betty. He has thirteen grandchildren spread across the United States from two sets of 3 years old twins to a 31 year old. He earned a Ph.D. in organization/industrial psychology. He has more than 300 published articles and nine books one of which is a memoir as a novel. His most recent book sees the sins of the 1970s being replicated today with almost frightening consistency. The book is titled A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007). His website is: www.fisherofideas.com and his email address is: thedeltagrpfl@cs.com.