George,

In this discourse I am not going to regurgitate the same demagoguery about leaving our childen saddled with the burden of financial debt. I fear that there is something much worse, an ecological calamity that threatens survival with meaning and just maybe survival itself, not only of humans but all living things. This is being hastened by the unmatched acceleration of man's inhumanity to man and his contamination of the evironment.

Before commenting further on this assertion let us take a look at the nature of the national debt that may be passed on to future generations. It is imporant that we factually put the debt phenomenon in perspective as we consider its impact in the past, at present, and what it portends for the future. Despite the current outrage of some people over the national debt it is important to recognize that this is not the first time America has been in debt. A relevant question is, "When was there a time when America was not in debt?" Think about States that boast of having balance budgets while depending on the Federal Government to fund their operations.

In1980 when President Jimmy Carter turned over the reign of government to President Ronald Regan the gross public debt was 909.0 billion dollars, (33.3% of GDP - Gross National Product). When President Regan left office eight years later, in 1990 the public debt was 3,206.3 billion dollars (55.5% of GDP). During the presidency of George W. Bush, the last former president, the debt increased nearly three and a half times from what it was when President Carter left office. As noted, the 55.5% of GDP was up from 33.3% of GDP during the Carter years, an increase of 22.2% in a decade. It was President Regan's deregulation and other polices insittuted during his administation that favored the rich at the expense of the poor that accounted for these huge deficit increases. Indeed, this was a new paradigm even for Americans who were gung-ho on free market capitalism.

During the next four years the economic policies of President Regan were maintained by President George Herbert Bush. When President William Clinton assumed the presidency in the 1990s the national debt was 3,206.3 billion dollars, (55.5% of GDP). During President Clinton's presidency the debt increased to 5,769 billion dollars (57.4% of GDP). The year before his presidency ended the debt was 58.0% of the GDP.

During the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush the public debt soared to 9.985.8 (70.2 of GDP). It is worth noting that the debt increased from 909.0 billion dollars (33.3% of GDP) in 1980 during the presidency of President Carter, in less than three decades, to 9.985.8 (70.2% of GDP) by the end of the presidency of George W. Bush which ended on January 19, 2009. This was a tenfold increase in the debt and more than a doubling of the percentarge of the GDP.

On January 20, 2009 President Barack Obama was inaugurated as the forty-fourth President of the United States. He inherited the national debt in the amount of 9.985.8 billion dollars (70.2% of GDP). He also inherited a nation with financial problems greater than any America has experienced since the Great Depression: massive housing foreclosures, an economy swifluy approaching a double dight unemployment, failing banks and other corporations, some of which, were considered to be "to big to fail," meaning that if they failed the nation woud plunge even further into a financial crisis, and an all-time low in consumer confidence.

Faced with these conditions President Obama had no choice, if he were to be responsible, but to increase the national debt. Only the Federal Goverment had the resources and legal power to deal with these astronomical conditions. He was immediately attacked by Republicans who was more interested in partisan politics than in rescuing the nation from its economic plight. They had been the chief debt-makers who created the debt by 41% and the GDP by 12.8% during the presidency of President Bush. Their diatribe about "the debt we are leaving to our children" is nothig more than a charade. Some Repubicans even publicly expressed their desire for President Obama to fail, which means that they want America to fail. Remember, when President Bush went to war in Iraq all Americans went to war. So if Obama fails all Americans fail. Republicans have failed to accept responsibility for the present state of the economy.

During the presidency of Harry S. Truman, as a result of World War II and the recession that followed, in 1950 the public debt was 257.4 billion dollars (94.1% of GDP). As stated earlier, by 1980 the national debt had been reduced to 909.0 billion dollars (33.3% of GDP.)

President Obama can also take some comfort in knowing that even with a huge debt, if the country experiences economic recovery, that what happened to the debt after President Truman's presidency can happen again. The national debt will likely increase, mabe to 90.0% of GDP, as is estimated to be the case by the beginning of 2010. But just as the debt decreased from 94.1% in 1950 to 33.3% of GPD in 1980, similarly, it can decrease in 10 to 15 years from 90.0% of GDP to 40% or 50% of GDP.

OF COURSE, MY FEAR IS NOT WITH THE NATIONAL FINANCIAL DEBT, BUT RATHER WITH THE NATIONAL MORAL DEBT THAT WE WILL LEAVE OUR CHILDREN. To be financially head over heels in debt or bankrupted is one thing, but to be morally bankrurpted is a far more serious matter. Future generations can handle the financial debt we leave with them, that is, if we don't leave them with a more weightier moral debt that money cannot buy or assuge that will make it extremely difficult for them to effectively deal with the financial debt they inherited.

In the past Americans who inherited the debts left to them by their forefathers and fathers - yes, foremothers and mothers - have been burdened. Descendants of slave-masters and descendants of slaves have experienced the effects of the legacy of slavery that continues to pit race against race, even as many, both black nd white, in earnest, seek to eliminate racial segregation, discrimination, disfranchisement and injustice, even in the courts.

America continues to practice hegemony in the twenty-first century, as evidenced in our current engagement in two wars that have claimed more than 5,000 Americans and a number of people who are officially designated as America's enemies. This practice has made Americans enemies of other nations whose children their children will be compelled to live with in a world that continues to become smaller. Yet, some American leaders have the audacity to call our engagement, without an invitation, in the affairs of other nations beneveolent hegemony. There is no such animal.

Also take a serious look at what Americans have done and are doing to the environment. The environment is becoming increasingly contaminated by global warming, greenhouse gasses, deforestation, pollution of oceans, air and land. We do not know what new diseases are on the horizon. In recent years we have confronted two formidable diseases that we named AIDS and Swine Flu. Biological warfare appears to be highly probale if not imminent.

These and other things that I will not mention constitute the real debt that we are leaving to our children. But even a greater debt that we are poised to leave them is a bankrupted morality that manifests itself, even now, in violence, greed and depravity. It is moral bankruptcy that produced the present financial debacle. Let me reiterate, it is not the financial debt that we will leave our children that disturbs me; it is the moral debt that we are likely to leave them. Americans' obsession with the material, war, including the "right to bear arms,"contaminate the human spirit and moves us even closer to the brink of "demorality," even as we extol individual achievement rather than community which is our only hope.

There is little doubt that our children will be able to handle any financial debt we leave them, providing we do not bequeathed to them the fruit and seeds that have on them our immoral soul's code imprint. The relevant question to ask, "Will our children be able to handle the real debt we leave them created by our inhumanity to other humans, primarily because of greed?"

Uriah J. Fields (Electronic mail, September 3, 2009)

Mr. Fields' new book, The Fields School: An African American School Without Failures Located in Rural Alabama 1933-1949 will be released in October.