So what do you think?

About the current crisis, that is. Are you scared? If so, what are you doing about it? Do you not think it's really a big deal; in other words, calling it a "crisis" is engaging in hyperbole? Or maybe you have given up a long time ago because you have concluded that the politicians will never do anything of substance, so why try? Are you figuring everything will calm down at some point if we just ride it out?

There is a method to my mad questioning here, namely that I really want to hear what you think, whether you are just stumbling across this blog or you read it whenever you see that there has been a new post. Yes, for the first time, I am actively soliciting comments to a post, rather than just being happy that the counter registers an additional visit. So please at least respond briefly with your thoughts on this.

I have been saying for months that we are living in very momentous times. Books will be written about this era for decades, perhaps centuries to come. And I do believe we are in deep-seated crisis. The market has rallied over the last several days and gone up about 600 points. Currently, the Dow hovers around 7200. My guess, however, is that this is a bear rally, and that it will sink again. I was talking to a friend this evening who thinks we've probably found the bottom at circa 6500. I hope he's right, but I doubt it.

Here is my core belief about the whole mess. It is a prime learning opportunity for us as American citizens. We are, one on one, quite limited in what we can do about it in terms of an immediate effect. But here is what I have decided to do.

This tumble in the world economy has highlighted for me what I don't know. It has also focused a glaring spotlight on the ignorance of the ostensibly smartest among us who claim such vast reservoirs of knowledge.

The vast bulk of the American people really do not understand the financial system of this country and how it works, including me. The more I learn about the Federal Reserve System, the more uneasy I feel about it. Additionally, the closer I look at that organization, the more all fingers point to the rise of the progressive movement of the early part of the 20th century that Jonah Goldberg so eloquently reports on in his excellent bestseller Liberal Fascism. I need to dig a little deeper on this...no, make that a lot deeper. I have a feeling I won't be happy with what I uncover.

But beyond that and even more urgently, the American people, including many of the best and brightest among us (and I mean that without any sarcastic connotation at all) have lost touch with Constitutional principles. I have been hearing Glenn Beck talk about the book The 5,000 Year Leap for quite a few months now. I finally bit the bullet and bought it. I am about 100 pages in, and my world has been rocked. I had no idea the apple had rolled this far downhill from the tree. I can tell that I have embarked on a long overdue lifelong quest: to understand the Constitution and advocate restoration of its truths to the public square, whatever that entails.

We cannot fight error with ignorance. We cannot combat foolish policies when we don't comprehend our own foundations. So I will be starting a weekly study of this book on Thursday, March 26 with 3 of my good friends; we'll be assisting the local and the global economies by meeting at Starbucks every Thursday night for an hour or so of discussion. And I will be recommending this book to everyone I come across who is interested in the welfare of the USA.

I don't think the world is ending. I also don't believe that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. (I could tip my hand right now and say I'm not a pre-millenialist, but that is another matter for another time.) But I do not believe the continuation of America as we know it is assured. In fact, the survival of the America we know and love as a beacon of freedom and dynamic growth has never been more in jeopardy. I do not speak these words lightly. We have faced trials from our very beginning, including a Civil War where more American lives were lost than in any other conflict, two world wars and a number of horrendous Presidencies, among a host of other evils. Yet, we suffer from an absence of common values in this country that brought us through the previously cited turbulence. (Read the book!)

It need not be so. I pray it does not unfold as it could. So I am trying to educate myself and others and to make my voice heard. I will not be silent. I want my children to live with the freedoms that I have enjoyed. I desire the same for my grandchildren and their offspring.

But if it is not to be...I want to be able, as an old man, to look those whom I love in the eye and say that the United States of America was worth fighting for and I acted accordingly.

What I am doing is only a start. What are you thinking about? How are you contributing? And how are you acting, rather than hunkering down and taking it?