In his essay “A Fire in the Basement” Bob Herbert provides many examples that ultimately ask “what happened to the American values ​​of freedom, justice, opportunity and equality that separated us from other nations?" Herbert states that our society no longer cares about upholding these once fundamental values. Herbert states that: "If I had one wish for this country, it would be leadership that would awaken the consciousness of the masses to deception and of the injustice that surrounds them" (402). It is obvious that Herbert is shocked by the current state of our nation's value system. And I must admit that we have lost sight of what really matters in today's society and that we need a leader who will lead the people of this nation out of the darkness and return them to the original ideals of freedom, justice, opportunity, and equality that built this nation. As stated earlier, Herbert uses many examples of inequality and injustice that he encountered in the United States , including the incarceration of an innocent eleven-year-old girl for 3 years, or the life of a young soldier irreparably changed by a roadside bomb that severed his spinal cord in Iraq. Now, many people might say that these are not new problems, that these types of problems have always existed, which in my opinion is just as bad, if not worse, than if these were new problems. We as a nation should have "lived" and learned from these experiences, not just let them continue for centuries. Herbert himself states: “It would be one thing if stories like these were rare, if they were bizarre events that happened in the past from which we learned a lesson and prevented them from happening again. But the stories I talk about are not rare” (398). After illustrating these examples Herbert continues by saying “I… halfway through the paper… knows if there will be no consequences. He is particularly troubled by President Bush's tax cuts to the "middle class," which were estimated to have transferred more wealth to the top 1 percent of the country's population than any other economic plan in history. I don't see how anyone could disagree with Herbert that the United States needs to very forcefully reevaluate the path it has taken. I completely agree with Herbert that this kind of immoral disregard for responsibility is reprehensible, every dollar spent affects the citizens of this nation, and every dollar wasted on war is money that could be used to lift people out of poverty or to buy books for poor schools. Bibliography Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell K. Durst. “They say/I say”: The moves that matter in academic writing: with readings. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009. Print.