There is a lot of disheartening news these days but maybe none as sad as a new poll indicating that 72 percent of American voters would not be willing to volunteer to fight for their country if the United States faced a major conflict.
Polls are not always accurate. If this one by Echelon Insights, published in Newsweek, was accurate it is disturbing, especially when it eppears we might be on the brink of a world war.
The United States was founded on liberty, fought against itself over that cause and helped the world preserve it in two world wars.
But the best it can do today is produce one in five Americans who would fight to preserve that liberty?
Another poll by the Daily Mail found that 30 percent of Americans ages 18-29 would rather surrender than die fighting for the United States.
That is the age group that would be called upon in a war but even the lower figure is frightening.
Confidence in the military also is at the lowest point since 1997, according to pollsters.
This terrible result can be attributed to the efforts of those who have sought to fundamentally transform this nation from what it was in 1776, 1865, 1918 and 1945 into something more resembling Nazy Germany or Communist China.
Who would fight for a country they hate?
But circumstances might negate the results of these polls. On Sept. 11, 2001, America quickly united and stood together after a sneak attack by islamofascists.
In 1940, 90 percent of Americans favored staying out of a world war already begun. Then came Dec. 7, 1941, and a declaration of war in Congress the next day got only one vote in opposition.
Freedom is worth fighting for and Ronald Reagan spoke for most Americans when he said, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”
