I’ve spent many years and miles driving through various parts of the US. It is a beautiful country in so many respects, yet hard to look at in others. It is a nation that bears testimony to the power of freedom and hard work.

Being “the land of opportunity”, some of its people have amassed great wealth while others live and suffer daily in crippling poverty. Opportunity will never knock on all doors equally. This is a fact of the human condition and cannot be changed.

America showcases its opulence and at the same time tries to hide some of the most saddening displays of poverty. For every coastal mansion or large yacht there seems to be an unending supply of rusting mobile homes that house the impoverished and forgotten. You can’t drive through small town America without seeing the ruins of a people left behind.

I am for the free markets and the free movement of capital but one cannot survey the landscape of the US without seeing what greed and the corrupt nature of man has wrought. Despite the irrational rantings of liberals and those that seek to redistribute the wealth of a nation, the poor will always be among us. There will always be those for whom opportunities seem fleeting and unattainable.

I do know what the solution is. I also know that man will not do, nor can he do, what is necessary. It will get worse. The divide will grow. Hope and despair will always live side by side.