Just some facts to go along with the recent quiz I posted: I imagine that the United States must be #1 in some other categories also but we definitely lead in these 3…
Over the last 40 years, America’s inmate population has quadrupled, from 500,000 to 2.3 million, giving the U.S. 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. The country now spends $70 billion a year ($50 billion of it at the state level) locking up all of these people.
Since the war on drugs began in the early 1980s, (Remember “Just say no?”) spending on prisons has grown at six times the rate of spending on higher education.
Our military budget which covers defense spending and anything else related to funding the military of the U.S. comprises about 24% of our total federal budget. (About 4% of the federal budget is spent on Education)
The recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were largely funded through supplementary spending bills outside the Federal Budget, so they were not included in the military budget figures until the 2010 budget. Now the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are categorized as “Overseas Contingency Operations” and included in the budget.
And according to a 2011 AP-GfK poll, 77% of adults in the United States think angels are real. 88% of Christians and 94% of those who attend weekly religious services believe in the existence of angels, and a majority of non-Christians and 4 in 10 of those who never attend religious services believe as well. And those of us who are over 30 are more likely than younger adults to think they exist.
No judgments here just some facts, but researching this and then thinking about angels reminded me of a quote from Abraham Lincoln that I had heard. Here is his final paragraph from his first inaugural address delivered in March of 1861…
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
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