It's as American as apple pie, hot dogs and baseball. It is a distinct character trait of the typical American. It is what we've been about since we told the British no to the tax on tea. Americans love to make choices!!
We want to choose the schools our children attend. We choose our spouses. We choose which church to attend. We love choices. The multiple listing available on our cable and satellite televisions can drive us to the verge of insanity, but we want 500 channels to choose from. My wife often asks what I want for supper.
Sometimes I pull down the candy dish and watch as my four year old delights in making a choice. It took me eight months to choose which house to buy. We bought a new car last year and we have been very happy with our choice of a Honda CRV. I am so glad I chose teaching for a profession in my younger years. I've been teaching for decades and I still love it! We know the joy of choosing here, one of the most fulfilling choices my wife and I ever made was to adopt a son.
Americans aren't too crazy about having their choices limited or taken away from them. We're troubled when we have no choice in how much we are forced to give the government. Its disturbing to us that we pay into Social Security our entire lives and then we get only a fraction of that amount back because the government decided to use those funds for other purposes. We get angry when someone tells us we can no longer choose our own physician, when our tax money is spent on buying new jets to transport our political leaders about the country instead of for more worthy causes. We love being able to choose who are representatives in government are but we get agitated when they vote on bills without even reading them. When the government steps in to offer to help us with our end-of-life decisions, we don't interpret that as compassion, we interpret that as arrogance and interference.
Americans love to make choices and we're looking forward very much to the choices we will make in November of 2010 and 2012!!
AMEN!
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