Dear Editor:

Divided since 9/11 I fear America has gone back to sleep – self satisfied and dead. I think about it every day. What am I living for? Could our unexamined lives not be worth the living?

Though I write an unpopular letter I am still warm at age 93. Along with my World War Two friends we agree America should reinstate the military draft to active service for both young men and women. The results would bring discipline, ideological training, how to love another for freedom’s sake that are lacking in this country today.

For example: People don’t sit together elbow to elbow or on the front seats. Even in our churches Christian love does not demonstrate a uniting ideology, but yields to individualism with people scattered all over the place. This is no challenge to the evil in the world.

In the terrors of our atomic age we must choose to be governed by absolute moral values such as absolute honesty, what’s clean and perfect, and absolute unselfishness for what’s right rather than who’s right. With these standards we could pull together for the greatness of America and give answers to the world as servant givers. Otherwise we condemn ourselves to blow up together unconscious of our moral responsibility to the Giver of Freedom as servant-givers.

Jesus said, ”Man does not live by bread alone . . . apart from me you can do nothing.”

In his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Victor E. Frankel laid out a twofold alert: “Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. Since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.” I think about it every day. What m I living for? Could our unexamined lives be not worth the living?

Sincerely,

Phillip Monfort, Waitsburg