by Georgie Bright Kunkel
If everyone whose family came to this country from somewhere else left, there would be nobody here. Even the so-called native Americans came to this country from another place on earth. Who does the earth belong to anyway? It is too bad that we didn’t believe like the Native Americans that we were just using the land. But even the early tribal settlers competed with other tribes for the right to inhabit certain areas of land.

Since the beginning of time there has been competition for the use of the earth. More aggressive humans have not been satisfied with the land they originally settled on but they had to fight other humans in order to expand their territory.

Now that the population of the earth has increased so tremendously, those of us who say we English speaking people control the US. are set to close our borders and refuse admittance to anyone who can’t speak English. All of our ancestors came from somewhere else to this country. But we have forgotten that I think. If we had developed a really workable United Nations it might be worked out but instead,

we, as the nation with the most weapons think we run the rest of the world. Now those who claim that English should be the only language spoken in the US are trying to keep out all the others who make up about half of our population. It is too late for that I think. What the answer is will be played out in the years to come. Those who believe that we should close our borders would like to keep anyone who lives in the US and who does not speak English from living the good life.

With the explosion of the population of the world, it will soon be a more violent time when those with the most weapons kick out those they don’t want to share with anymore. Certainly it is time to form a world government that represents all the people on the earth. We only have one earth and as the population increases, we must find ways to share the only earth that we have before the world erupts into even more chaos.

At present the world is a mixed bag of varying kinds of government. There have been numerous experiments in social living but capitalism seems to have won out and so those who control capital are in the driver’s seat. Granted, we do maintain socially controlled water systems, fire departments and school systems. Experiments in cooperative living have not lasted too long, however. Entrepreneurs who want to amass wealth usually win out. The ordinary citizen secretly admires the multi-millionaire who can command a jet plane and a spacious hideaway.

We seem to settle into our personal lives without a sense of sharing with others less fortunate until a disaster happens. It seems to take a catastrophe of some sort to bring out the quality of human empathy in people. It is heartwarming to watch the world news and realize that when a disaster strikes there are people who care enough to come to the rescue. Since we no longer live in country villages, it takes a concerted effort by agencies supported by donations to reach out to people in crisis.

There has been an effort of late to organize by neighborhoods in the city. Neighborhood potlucks and neighborhood watch efforts are on the increase. Personally I like to get acquainted with my neighbors so that I don’t feel isolated in my city environment. By just writing this column I have found a special way to reach out into my community. Just today one of my readers approached me to say that she really enjoyed my column. I replied, “If you didn’t enjoy my column, I couldn’t write it.” So thanks for being there.

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at 206-935-8663 or gnkunkel@comcast.net