I don't quite know where to start. I don't like to use--let alone depend on--statistics. I would prefer to argue principle. But nobody seems to pay any attention to principle.

If Christians were attentive to principle, they would have to quit hating Muslims, call off all their wars--and give up all their wealth to follow Jesus. If Christians were attentive to principle, they would despise--as Jesus did--all hypocrisy. (Sorry, Benedict: you are the number one hypocrite.)

But Christianity is a minority religion, and the United States is largely a godless place unless you let the hypocrites count as godly.

Even as a secular nation, the United States pretends to principle. We talk about democracy even as we subvert it. We talk about equal opportunity but do nothing to establish it. Our president talks about our consitiution while he violates it. We talk of justice and honor while we kidnap and torture and run a World War II style concentration camp.

So let's not try to talk principle. Let me cite a few statistics, and invite you to focus your attention on them.

You and I own slightly more than 61% of General Motors. For some alleged reason it was "saved" by our generous government, and still exists. It has a new CEO, Daniel Akerson. And somehow, President Obama's overseer has agreed that Daniel Akerson deserved a $9,000,000 pay package for this year!

How does Daniel Akerson deserve such? Deserve? There are hungry Americans, homeless Americans, jobless Americans who can't get work because Daniel Akerson needs $9,000,000.

We approved that? Are we crazy? Or is our greed so blind and stupid that we will protect Daniel Akerson's greed because someday we might get a chance at a similar-sized theft?

TIAA-CREF is a retirement fund organisation created for teachers. For some years Clifton Wharton. Jr., was its president. Dr. Wharton came from the academic world. Dr. Wharton was and is a great man, and not a greedy man; he didn't need a huge salary in 1987 when he accepted the presidency of the organisation founded to help university teachers prepare for retirement. But in 2009, when Roger Ferguson took over that job, he "needed"--and was given--$11,000,000 a year, plus benefits and expenses.

Should TIAA-CREF be spending teachers' money so extravagantly? If university professors are now making enough to afford people like Roger Ferguson, then university professors are paid too much, too.

But $9,000,000 a year isn't much in the United States, nor is $11,000,000 plus benefits and expenses. Daniel Akerson's annual $9,000,000 is four and a half minutes--minutes--worth of the United States military budget.

The United States spent $1,039,531,000,000 on what was euphemistically called "defense" this past year. That's $2,000,000 a minute.

And what is our defense? War in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, bombings in Palistan, kidnappings and assassination attempts everywhere, United States troops occupying parts of Cuba, Japan, Germany, Britain, Italy, Greece. Dangerous, murderous, and not very bright CIA operatives--I have known five of them--all over the world. (I wonder if the assistant economics attaché at the United States Embassy in London is still the cover for the chief CIA man in Europe?)

The best defense the United States could mount would be decency in the world at large, and a decent society at home.

Since the days of the Marshall Plan--which was one of the greatest undertakings of any government in the history of this world--the United States has gone from failure to failure, disaster to disaster, lie to lie, greed to more greed.

Can we still save us? Yes: but we need to get busy now, before there's nothing left to save, nothing left worth saving.