Times of national crisis provide us with an opportunity to reflect on our values and foundations. The recession that has produced frightening job losses in the past few months has given us a choice: We can either turn to government in a fruitless attempt to be sheltered from reality, or we can turn to the resilient American spirit that has brought our country thus far.

The intrepid and entrepreneurial spirit that brought Pilgrims across an ocean, wagon trains into the West and generations before ours through darker days than these is the only thing that can sustain us in times of need.

This recession is an opportunity for our leaders to sound a clarion call for a rebirth of self-reliance and personal responsibility. Instead, President Barack Obama and big government liberals are advancing an unsound ideology and trying to use the cover of economic hardship to grow government. Their ideology is flawed because it dampens the resolve of our citizens and fosters a languid mentality when confronted with hardship.

No question, these are difficult times, financially, socially and emotionally. But before people who are out of work give up hope and head for government relief offices that have been buoyed by an influx of freshly minted stimulus cash, they should consider that they have a much better chance of finding a new job than all the doom and gloom would suggest.

Big monthly job loss numbers are easy to report, and they make tantalizing articles, but they do not tell the whole story. In fact, we are hiring millions of people thanks to employee turnover and what economists call "churn." Churn refers to the amount of jobs that are both lost and created, and people who switch positions for innumerable reasons. Even when economic growth is stagnant, both churn and turnover lead to job openings and new hires.

It is the number of hires each month that is meaningful for unemployed job seekers. During strong economic times, such as the six months from September 2007 through February 2008, the nation's employers averaged almost 4.7 million hires per month. During the same period in a recession battered September 2008 through February 2009, they still hired almost 4 million employees per month, a decrease of only 15 percent.

In other words, 85 percent of hires are still occurring, and the unemployed should vigorously pursue them. Although many employers are suffering, turnover is frequent, and many have job openings that need to be filled. The most recent National Federation of Independent Business report indicated that 11 percent of its members had job openings waiting to be filled.

Finding a job can be hard, but it's not impossible. That is good news that the newly unemployed need to hear before they believe the media barrage and big government hype about how bad things are, give up prematurely and end up sitting on the federal dole.

In the midst of all the troubling news about our economy, one thing we can easily improve is our outlook. Economic doomsaying abounds from political and media elites, from President Obama on down.

This leaves many job seekers feeling completely hopeless, unmotivated and feeling that there are truly no jobs to be found. Nothing could be further from the truth.