Now mind you, I am all for good deals.  I am all for finding bargains and I love that stores offer deep discounts to draw shoppers in during this the busiest of shopping seasons.  The competition of this season is a picture of the heart of what free enterprise and competition are all about.  It is the engine that drives capitalism and has brought prosperity to our land like no other nation in history has seen.  On top of that, this competition has allowed the eyes of many a child to grow wider with joy and excitement on Christmas morning.

But will the family of Jdimytai Damour, the 34 year old man killed at that Walmart, find that same joy this Christmas?  Will those shoppers who streamed over the victims body to purchase a new plasma TV or digital camera at a discounted price find excitement using their new toy knowing that it cost a man his life?  

They say the shoppers ripped the doors off the hinges to get in. Workers had to fight to get to their fallen colleague.  It has been reported that shoppers actually stepped on the rescue workers who were performing CPR on the fallen man.  And some shoppers refused to leave and kept on shopping even when the store officials told them that the store was being closed because a worker had been killed.

It is shameful.

Now I have to be honest.  After reading the reports and seeing the photographs, I had to fight a wave of rather racist stereotypes that immediately went through my mind.  I am not a racist person, but the fact that almost everyone in the crowd outside that store was African-American didn't escape me (it also didn't escape me that this was likely a neighborhood dominated by liberal Democrats).  So it was a struggle to not place those two facts in the middle of my thinking.  I think, however, that this event today is not about race or politics, but about our society's priorities, our lost sense of who we are, and most importantly, our lost understanding of what this season is about.

There have been times in the past that people have stampeded to get food during a famine, when getting to the front of the line was a matter of life and death for entire families.  People `stampeded' in the old west to secure a piece of land to change the fortunes of their family forever.  There are times when quick action and aggressively pursuing one's own interests are called for.  An opportunity to save $20 on a digital camera is not such a time.   Our nation has been so abundantly blessed for so long.  Our poor are mostly better off than the rest of the world's middle class.  While the poor in Africa often die of starvation or disease, we complain if the poor here don't have a car, a microwave, cable tv, and high speed internet.  Our nation, founded on hard work and sacrifice, has become spoiled by its success....and become lazy and selfish.

We have lost our way.