The Decline

The following essay is a critical response to Margaret Atwood's essay "A Letter to America" written for my comp class. before you read the essay, i would like to credit Josh Healy with the definition of Faux Patriotism. 

Margaret Atwood is a true patriot. She does not exhibit faux patriotism, which is becoming widespread in America today. A faux patriot is someone who blindly follows his or her government and supports its every move because it is the country they live in, and as such should be supported. Rather, she speaks with true patriotism in her essay “A Letter to America.” She calls for change when necessary as our founding fathers did, to make America a better nation. This is needed now more than ever as America descends the downward spiral that it has begun within the past several years.  Atwood compares the nation of fifty years ago to the nation of today. She explains the greatness that America once inspired, but implies that the only thing it inspires today is paranoia. She attributes the recent decay of our nation to the imbalance of the most basic core values. The disregard of important core values and unneeded emphasis of others has helped propel America into this decline, and, until the balance is restored, America will be unable to reclaim its once hailed status.         

            Trust and privacy have been sacrificed for safety and national security. All four are equally important values, and should be treated as such.  Two unrelated values being compared and unjustifiably given different levels of importance causes problems to arise. Who gets to decide between privacy and national security? Both are equally important in a democratic nation. Due to rising threats of terrorism, residents’ mail can now be spied on for increased national security. The government can now track every move made by its people. Records can be searched. Sure, this makes America a safer place, but at what cost? How safe can a country be whose government cannot trust its people? A government that does not trust its people should not be trusted in return. This is one of Atwood’s reasons for calling for a change in the way this country is run.

            In addition to trust and privacy, equality and material comfort are also being sacrificed. This sacrifice, again, yields heightened national security. With inflation and increased government spending, maintaining a happy lifestyle is becoming more and more difficult. The American middle class is dying. Economic standing was never at a state of equality in America, and never can be in order for the free market to function properly. However, at the rate the economy is going, this state of equality will be so much worse that how people are treated will be based solely on their economic status. America may be coming to, as Atwood puts it, “a few megarich King Midases, with the rest being serfs.” Spending in America has been reckless for the past few years, leading to a major recession which prohibits Americans from the material comfort that they once enjoyed. Possessions once considered everyday commodities are now luxuries, even Starbucks and fast food are being cut from Americans’ budgets as money grows tighter and tighter. Yet with the economy in such terrible shape, the national debt continues to increase to more than ten trillion dollars. Rather than using money to stimulate the dying economy, it is spent on a seemingly never ending war. The drastic decay of the economy is another reason that Atwood calls out for change in her country.

            The change she calls for is the rebalancing of basic core values. She calls for America to regress to the balance of values it once had. Yes, safety and national security are important, but are they important enough to totally revoke a right to privacy? Should we have to trade in equality and material comfort to achieve safety? Atwood calls America to call upon its “great spirits of the past” to help guide it back to greatness. “Summon them now,” she says, “to stand with you, to inspire you, and to defend the best in you.” America needs to recall those leaders and ideals that once led it to attain greatness. The values need to be rebalanced. A country cannot run smoothly without the trust, privacy, equality, or comfort of its people, and a country with a poor economic status can not run at all.

            Margaret Atwood is one hundred percent correct in her assessment that America is in a decline. The values of the past have been deemed unimportant and have been replaced with those that yield governmental gain, an unhealthy road for a country to travel. A democracy cannot function properly without the accordance of its people. If America plans to remain one of the greatest countries, it needs serious change.