LTE: Metro Sacrifice Brightens Future

I can’t help but ask myself, are we still Americans?  I hear people complain about taxes, complain about spending money on a project that will benefit all of our community, the Metro. I hear them concerned with what Metro is going to cost them personally. It seems these days we are all for something until that something costs us something. Once we see we have to make sacrifice, it seems we lose interest. I want to ask, in this week before we celebrate our country’s independence, where would this country be if we always thought like this.

Would we have even won our independence if we had decided it was going to cost us too much? Would we have stayed on the sidelines and never fought to free Europe from the forces of the Germans? What if every soldier who stormed the beaches of Normandy decided that it was no longer worth moving forward because it was going to require sacrifice? Would we have a space program or would we simply have decided that it was going to cost too much? Would we still have made it so every child gets to go to a school and get an education or would we have decided it was just going to cost too much? I bring these examples up because in all of these instances Americans have made sacrifices for the betterment of the world and community we live in.

Some people still make these contributions to society, but as a whole, most of us simply are not interested in helping people we have never met and could care less about what goes on in our community until they think it is going to effect them personally. We as a community, have a chance to do something that will benefit our county and it’s citizens for generations to come. We have the opportunity to help clean our environment a little, making our air and water that much cleaner. Building the Metro out to Ashburn will help countless generations to come, and we owe that to them and to ourselves. 

The population has been on the rise, the road systems in Loudoun County are stressed and backed up. Some will say that this project is going to cost us too much, or don’t want to pay extra in taxes or tolls so it can be built. I say think back to a time when we did things in this country, because they were simply the right thing to do and they were going to make the world a better place. We have a chance to make our little corner of the world a better place and we should be glad we have the opportunity. I still believe that our system is the best in the world, but I question if we have the resolve to do what generations before us have been able to do. Will we decide to build something that will serve the community for generations to come? Or will we decide that it isn’t worth it if it’s going to cost us the same as a cup of coffee at Starbucks every morning?

Sincerely,

Melvin Summers