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renew that sense of a common American journey« Thread Starte

Daily newsbrief journal for April 2007, also see http://www.usdemocrats.com/brief for a global 100-page perpetual brief and follow twitter @usdemocrats


renew that sense of a common American journey« Thread Starte

Postby admin » Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:42 am

renew that sense of a common American journey« Thread Started on Apr 28, 2007, 11:33am » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------America lives at peace, thank God. The end of the Cold War has dispelled the largest single threat to American security in the last half century. A generation has passed without the Government impressing a single American youth into military service against his will. Around the world, America shines a beacon of freedom whose brilliance reaches into the darkest prison cell of the most repressive dictatorship.But the world remains far from safe. Threats to American security come from quarters less foreseeable than before. Today we must guard against the menace of global terrorism and the risk of biological or nuclear horror that can travel in suitcases as well as missiles. And at home, we must ensure that we do not repay the many sacrifices of our men and women in uniform with poverty merely so that Pentagon bureaucrats can stockpile unproven weapons from wealthy defense contractors. Our Nation’s leadership must always place American security foremost. We can do better. Many of our blessings so far recounted flow from the strong American economy. Its genius lies in safeguarding the maximum degree of market freedom consistent with the maintenance of economic justice. Americans sensibly eschewed the state ownership with which Europe so inauspiciously experimented, favoring instead the lighter hand of regulation. But America also sensibly tempers the excesses of unchecked laissez faire capitalism, intervening to bust monopolies and ensure fairness. The combination of vast market freedom 27/ with judicious social oversight has yielded an economic juggernaut unrivaled in world history. Based on purchasing power, our economy produces more per person than nearly any industrialized nation. 28/Let us remember, however, what Robert Kennedy said of the Nation’s economic output: “Our gross national product . . . if we should judge America by that — counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.” 29/ Bobby Kennedy would say, “We can do better.”Thus, in a good country, even if life is safe — even if people have food, pure air and water, shelter, health, security, peace, and rewarding work — we seek more to lend life quality. We do seek learning, joy, poetry of beauty, and marriages of strength. We do seek intelligent public debate and honest officials. We do seek wit, courage, wisdom, and devotion. We do seek that which makes life worthwhile. And we do seek that which makes us proud to be Americans.America is a good country when its people seek to be a good people. What makes a people good depends in turn largely on what makes a person good. As John Stuart Mill wrote, “The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.” 30/Americans believe we are good. 31/ We admire people who do good — people like Mother Theresa and Billy Graham, Jimmy Carter and the Pope. 32/ We would like to be more like them. We want to be better than we are.Americans can be a considerate people. Stephen Carter tells of civility and concern for others in the early days of the railroad: “In the middle of the unruly nineteenth century . . . America was agog over railroads. . . . Everyone wanted to ride. Everybody suddenly had someplace to go. . . .“Travel in those days was necessarily in groups. Nobody but the very rich could afford to travel alone. One bought a ticket and sat down in a train car full of strangers. . . . [T]his remarkable new technology worked as well as it did, moving its citizenry from city to city, because the travelers understood their obligation to treat each other well. They purchased guides to proper behavior, like Politeness on Railroads by Isaac Peebles, and tried to follow its rules . . . .“. . . Everyone followed the rules for the sake of their fellow passengers, and they did so . . . out of a spirit of “self-denial and the self-sacrifice of one’s own comfort for another’s.” Alone of God’s creation, human beings can make those choices, setting aside their own needs and desires for the sake of living with others.” 33/ We as a people need to renew that sense of a common American journey, that sense that each of us can give just a little of ourselves to help all of us get where we want to go. We can do better.
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