Posted on 02/10/2004 1:04:45 PM PST by qam1
STEVENS POINT - A friend from California leaned over to me the other day and said, "Are you going to work hard in this year's election?"
My response was wishy-washy.
"You have to," he said. "If progressives don't work as hard as they can, it could take your daughters' whole lifetimes to undo this. And I'm not even talking about the Supreme Court."
The words he spoke were like a poke with a cattle prod. My daughters are 20 and 21. He has a son in his 20s and another in his teens. In a few short words, he had caused me to look well beyond my own life, and to view the future from the perspective of those young people we had brought into the world. He opened the door to a sense of urgency.
We were on our way to a weeklong conservation meeting when he shook me up. In between work duties, there was time to ponder my friend's words. Each time, they led to that same feeling of urgency.
Those of us who proudly call ourselves progressives and liberals have been too short on urgency for some long while. If crisis breeds action, we should be getting it now. Let's hope so.
There are lessons for us to be learned about urgency from sources we might not like to admit. Take guns. Those who worry about their guns have urgency. That, and fear, a powerful if dangerous combination.
The National Rifle Association has engendered the urgency and fear, and among those who would seem to have the smallest need for either. While the NRA can claim people from many walks of life, it's safe to generalize that the bulk of its membership is male and white and probably not too lean on cash flow.
Somehow, they have been convinced that they should be urgently fearful. Their pickup trucks and SUVs proclaim that fear and urgency with bumper stickers and gun racks. Those commodities, fear and urgency, translate into political power to be rivaled by only a few other movements.
They are strong enough to tear NRA adherents away from what they should be concerned about. That would include globalization at the expense of their jobs and those of their children, decay in educational systems and rot in the environment, to mention a few.
Still, their urgency is directed at their beloved guns and the perceived conspiracy to rip them out of their hands.
All said, there's no denying the power of their ardor.
A few days after my friend spoke so clearly, we were in the same room as a man named Byron Kunisawa spoke to conservationists from around the country about diversity. It's a topic well worth the listening for conservationists, too, because we're woefully lacking in diversity.
Kunisawa, who owns a company called Cultural Solutions, hit a home run on the topic. At one point, he noted that, to effect change, it is necessary to somehow include four generations: the post-World War II builders; the baby boomers; Generation X; and the youngest among us, known as nesters.
Of my generation, he said: "The baby boomers made social change, but then they decided to go shopping." The crowd had a good laugh at that.
Of the latter two generations, he noted that Generation X was the most independent in history, primarily because they grew up as latch-key children. Nesters, he said, grew up in the midst of a technological explosion, and they are often more comfortable with technology than human interaction.
His line about baby boomers took me to my own feelings, which I've visited many times before. It's been my contention that most of this generation got what it needed during the tumultuous '60s and '70s and then either stopped caring or just gave up.
Now we face the great challenge that my friend described and we must fight again for what we believe in, because it's all at stake. Every generation has its songs. One of ours was "Teach Your Children Well," by Crosby, Stills and Nash. It is our time to ponder the wise words of that song, "Their father's health will slowly go by." We were the children when the song was first heard. As our fathers and mothers, the builders, pass on, we are left to guide the way.
Now is our time to be urgent again. It is time to stop shopping and do something of meaning. We can and must do so, for we are now responsible for the future of other generations. We love these children who followed us. They need our urgency, and right now, lest we leave them with the spoils of our failures.
Bill Berry of Stevens Point writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. E-mail: billnick@coredcs.com
I doubt it, but beyond that what kind of sicko decides to get politically active because he thinks his own daughters might not be able to have an abortion?
I swear I could get a Liberal to run Naked through Times Square proclaiming George Bush is God if all I told them was they needed to "Do it for the children"
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