I don't know when we lost America, but we did. Maybe it was the 70's.

Back in the 60's there was still a real zeal and a passionate burning feeling about America by Americans for America. We were still proud and were willing to stand up against unjust wars and corporate greed.

Many felt so strongly they burned their draft cards and defected to Canada. There were more thing's gone wrong in the 60's and more people willing to die for their beliefs and standards than had been witnessed since WWII when America was still truly strong just 30 years prior.

Can we get it back? Personally, I don't think so. Fast forward to 2015.  Where do I even start some 45 years later. The lost generation.  Worried sick that someone might step on their rights.  Rights that were fought and died for by millions of Americans gone before them. The ACLU, don't even get me started; one of the many disasters that has befallen this country.  Our judicial system; a disgrace.

Now they want it all. Privilege and entitlement, with no worries about the consequences of their misguided moral compasses. The young folks have just plain lost it. No, take that back, they never had it. The guts to stand up for what's right. The wisdom to understand that the world is not a perfect place.  The courage to man-up and take up the fight for justice.

No, not me.  Take those poor folks that can't make it into a college and let them stand up in the military to keep us safe and secure within our borders. Not my problem, let some other guy handle it.  I earned the right to sit on my ass smoking dope and going to a few classes in a junior college.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll get a job someday.

Do you sense that something might be wrong here?  The loss of leadership we've experienced in this country in the last 40 years has been devastating.

In election after election in the last 10 years, Americans have continued to say that the means of governing and its leadership is broken. Americans across the country desperately want the new leadership that is needed to accomplish our goals in the United States. At present, they know that the only way this can be done is by changing the means of governance. Once the source is fixed, the good results will flow naturally and inevitably. Americans, while divided on some public policy issues, are united on the dysfunction they see in leadership nationally.

While I am disheartened at the events in Paris last week, I am still hopeful as a I see leaders locally in our neighborhoods and communities emerge and attempt a different way of getting the job done. Social change has sprouted up across our land like homeless shopping carts while we scamper to try and meet the needs of the less fortunate. At some point, national leaders will follow where the country is already headed. The past tells us that our leaders don't lead, they follow where we as citizens want to go.

The message is very clear in the cacophony of noise coming from reality television and reality politics. Fix the source and find the core values all of us Americans care about. It is my hope, as new national leaders begin to emerge who are authentic and who put our nation ahead of self, that we will give them the support they deserve. As we sit down next week with our families for a feast at Thanksgiving, it's apparent that we are hungry for a new brand of leadership. The Thanksgiving table is a table we can sit together at no matter our party affiliation.