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What words could have been more tragic to us in our youth than Edward Everett Hale’s moving tale of Philip Nolan, “The Man Without a Country”?

This story haunted me throughout my days in grammar school as I tried to imagine what life had been like for Nolan, an Army officer, who in 1807, during Jefferson’s presidency, stated publicly on trial in court, “Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!” (Today, a minister goes unscathed for saying essentially the same thing.)

The court ordered that Philip Nolan be assigned to live lifelong aboard various U.S. Navy ships among personnel ordered never to speak name of the United States of America in his presence.

From that moment on, Sept. 23, 1807, until the day he died, May 11, 1863, Nolan never again heard the name of, nor set foot on, the United States of America. For that half-century and more, Nolan became “the man without a country.”

Lately I have had the weird suspicion that I may be a man who is without the country in which he was born, which he served in war, and which he has always loved intensely. Is it my country that is changed, or I?

I have suggested that some George Soros-like influence — tremendously rich and malicious — seems to be attempting to bring the United States down to the level of a Third World country.

To me, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have always been sacred figures, and I remain astounded that the young United States found such giants to serve as early presidents.

Great leadership emanates from great character and high intelligence.

Most of the time during my life, there have been persons of excellent quality visible somewhere in our national government.

Today I fondly attach high and noble quality to the memory of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s presidency reminded me unceasingly that I was a citizen in a great country.

Through him, the good of this grand and noble nation was consistently able to flow down from the mountaintops to the humblest of citizens. Leadership, after all, concerns itself primarily with the handling of both good and evil — bringing the good to the fore and combating the latter.

Do you ever find yourself asking if the guy now in our White House concerns himself much with truth, or understands fully the ever-present potentials of good and evil?

Obama’s lies are legend. He utters his prevarications while looking straight into our eyes.

What can explain Obama’s not delivering obligatory budgets in timely fashion?

Where are all those jobs he promised?

Why do we still have a wide-open, seemingly insurmountable “border problem”?

President Obama’s lavish spending has increased our national debt to unforeseen levels.

Can we find a way to rescind Obama’s bizarre health care plan once and for all?

Aren’t Obama’s defense concepts woefully weak and potentially even dangerous?

Does Obama have a pragmatic bone in his body?

In our long tradition, when may we once again look to the White House as the source of supreme moral “leadership?”

When, if ever, are we going to get our country back?