The following is a quote from the book WHY WE RUN, by Bernd Heinrich. He had asked his father, a German who had fought in two world wars for Germany, whether or not he should enlist and fight for his country, the USA, during the Vietnam War:

"America is an experiment," he said, and after a long pause continued, "where the driving force is individuals chasing money. I would not risk my bones for a society guided by this principal."

Regardless of how this opinion makes one feel, there does seem to be some truth to it, and in light of the current world condition, perhaps more than a little of the calamity can be traced to the mechanisms that drive this country. Sometimes an outsider's opinion can slow you down just enough to see things that have been right there in front of you, but that had been hidden behind the cultural shrouds of one's origins. We are what we are...but then again maybe we are so much more...

"To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish."
-Yiddish proverb-