To the people in this country, including Alpena, if you think socialism, where the government owns and distributes everything — to include health care, businesses, where you work and live, and pretty much what you do — is a great way to go, consider what Pastor James Merritt on the TBN Network has to say.

We will eat more food today than most of the world will eat in a week. We will get in a car or house that is air conditioned or heated when billions don’t own a car or house and are shivering or sweating it out.

If you have not suffered starvation, you are better off than 500 million people. If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back, a place to sleep, you are better off than 75 percent of the people in the world. If you have any money in the bank or change in your pocket, you are in the top 8 percent of people in the world.

If you can read or write you are better off than 775 million people in the world.

Wake up! If you are able-bodied and on the government dole, or think the government is the answer, you are badly mistaken. The government owns nothing. It can only give to one that it takes away from another. Our system of democracy, ownership, freedom and free enterprise is the greatest in the world, don’t let it slip away.

CARL KELLY,

Alpena