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Last Updated: Jul 10, 2008 - 12:32:05 PM |
We stand at a fateful crossroad between what this country was meant to be and what personal greed and corporate corruption wish to make it. While we sip our lattés and watch our 500 channels, the heritage of our children is swirling down the drain of history. We’ve sold our birthright for a bowl of porridge. And while we praise our forefathers for the wisdom and bravery that secured us the blessings of freedom and opportunity, our descendants will curse us for the greed and selfishness that squandered the riches we were given.
A favorite question of mine is, “What’s the American dream?” Most people answer, “To own your own home” or “To live the good life” or something else that highlights how far we’ve been led down the primrose path of materialism and its modern expression, consumerism. However, I don’t believe it was for the fleeting high of endless acquisition that our forefathers froze in Valley Forge or died on Iwo Jima. It wasn’t for the latest fad or the newest gimmick that our brothers and sisters withstood the ridicule of the few to earn the gratitude of the many in Vietnam. And it isn’t for our wide-screen, HD, plasma televisions or our GPS-equipped state-of-the-art cars that our children are enduring the sweltering heat of a fly-infested desert. No, it wasn’t for things that these heroes have sacrificed. The American dream is freedom and opportunity for all.
I look around me and when I see my fellow Americans, I see people of every race and ethnic background. We’re the melting pot of the world, and if a family has been here for more than a few generations, it is probable that they’re the genetic descendants of a multitude of people groups. In the words of a once popular song, “We are the world.”
We have no racial or ethnic singularity or difference from the people of every other nation on earth, so how did America become the greatest nation and the best hope of mankind? What was the difference? What allowed America made up of the “the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to surge ahead of everyone becoming the colossus that bestrides the world? Two words, “freedom” and “opportunity” – two concepts that opened the door for the pent-up creativity and ambition of man. That is what made us great and I believe that’s what can restore our competitive edge.
Many call those brave souls who as young adults weathered the Depression only to step into the breach confronting the first great wave of totalitarianism, those whose personal bravery and sacrifice won World War II, who fought the good fight in Korea, and who ultimately led us to victory over the second great wave of totalitarianism the greatest generation. And as a grateful son of that generation, I would in no way belittle their heroism, their sacrifice, or their leadership. But I cannot call them the greatest generation.
In my estimation, the greatest generation was that unbelievable gathering of giants who founded this republic, who guided a struggling combination of 13 colonies, bled white by war and crushed in debt to forge a nation that became the shining beacon of man’s greatest achievement. And while all the generations that have gone before us have stepped up and done whatever was needed to be done to preserve the freedom and opportunity that has been the catalyst for our prosperity, are we to be the generation that allows indolence and greed to forge the very shackles previous generations have shattered? Within a generation, we have gone from the greatest creditor on earth to the greatest debtor, from the greatest manufacturer to the greatest consumer. Once we said, “If it’s good for GM it’s good for America”; now we say, “How close is the nearest Wal-Mart?” Productivity has been replaced by consumption, innovation by indolence, and where once the world ranted about American economic imperialism, now everything we buy is made in China, and we’ve been sold a bill of goods!
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