Posted on 06/12/2006 11:54:40 AM PDT by 45Auto
The Greatest Generation faced and surmounted four crises: the social and economic upheavals of industrialization (including the Great Depression); a second world war against abject evil; the rise of the Soviet “super-state” as a rival to democratic-capitalism; and the struggle to ensure the self-evident and inalienable rights of all Americans through the civil rights movement.
Today, our generation of Americans must also confront and transcend a quartet of crises: the social and economic upheavals of globalization; a third world war against abject evil; the rise of communist “China, Inc.” as a rival to democratic-capitalism; and the erosion of our self-evident truths by moral relativism.
Yet there is a critical difference between the crises confronted by the Greatest Generation and our generation of Americans: generally, they faced their crises consecutively; we face our crises simultaneously.
Amid these turbulent times, our first task is to comprehend this quartet of crises; and our second task is to construct policies which through the rule of law will wrest order from the chaos. Order, alone, and law, alone, will not suffice to re-establish and retain our domestic tranquility and security. Order without law is oppression; and law without order is illusion. We must, therefore, have both law and order, because both are needed to seed the fruits of justice and peace.
In seeking order and law (and, thus, justice and peace, tranquility and security), we must be heartened and guided by Greatest Generation’s greatest virtue, which fortified their resilient, purposeful steps along their path to legend: their moral clarity. The Greatest Generation knew America was the greatest nation. This was no blind belief. It was a conviction born of right reason applied to the providential unfolding of their personal experience with America’s fundamental truths, traditions, rights and duties. Possessed of such purpose, the Greatest Generation was able to marshal the full spiritual and material prowess of their nation to surmount their challenges and attain the zenith of acclaim.
If we are to emulate their heroism, it is imperative for us to stem the erosion of our free republic’s foundational, self-evident truths by the insidious myths of moral relativism. This crisis is especially disturbing, as only through a united acceptance and adherence to universal truths worth defending even unto death did the Greatest Generation prevail. Now we must do no less to unite, triumph, and transcend our simultaneous quartet of crises.
Undoubtedly, of course, there will be those who resist history’s invitation and pale before its patent reality; and, more ominously, there will be those who deny our perilous present and the inherent goodness of our nation. If they prevail in the public square, we are damned. For if in our duty we falter and fail, generations unnamed will rue the day we slipped the womb to salt their earth.
Never! Let us embrace what we cannot escape; and accept our generation’s invitation to immortality. Let us greet these trying times with prudence, resilience, and perseverance, steeped in the triumphs of the past and steeled in our knowledge we are the Americans who must and will preserve and perpetuate our free republic’s revolutionary experiment in constitutional democracy in the face of chaotic tribulations. And when we succeed, our free progeny will eternally laud our courageous and perspicacious defense of their liberty, and all humanity’s “last best hope” on earth.
Mr. McCotter, a Republican, represents the 11th District of Michigan in the U.S. House.
"Head-in-the-Sand, home-grown America haters are the greatest threat to Liberty."
Yeah, I'm arguing with one now about how a concussion bomb couldn't have killed Zakawri. But that's off topic, sorry!
Too many of "the greatest generation" have continued to vote democrat even after the democrat party morphed into the old enemies that they supposedly defeated.
"The greatest anchors around the necks of the younger generations among us are ignorance, Political Correctness and Multiculturalism."
May I add moral equivalence? Also known as anti-judgmentalism. Nobody, and this extends well beyond the younger generations, seems capable of defining right and wrong anymore. The Gay Agenda has benefitted mightily from this fog of confused morality in which we find ourselves immersed.
Call it the Normam Lear-ification of America.
We have that series, my youngest son has watched all the way through I don't know how many times! Both boys are considering the military for a number of reasons. The idiot I'm arguing with fails to realize the facts you have presented. Of course he thinks 9/11 and the subsequent military actions were all just "setups" by the government, the CIA, the IDF etc.
Moral clarity is something a great many lack.
I say our greatest generation is yet to come.
What made my grandparent's generation so great? Was it that they fought and won WWII? Perhaps, but how does that differ from the generations that fought and won WWI or the Civil War? It does differ greatly from the generation that protested Vietnam and currently supplies the protestors of the War of Terrorism.
Was it that they had it hard growing up during the Depression? Compared to the priviledge and luxury their kids grew up in, yes they did have rough childhoods. But their childhoods weren't any rougher than those of their parent or grandparents.
I say the greatest generation our nation has seen so far is the one of the Gilded Age. Men such as Morgan, Carnegie, Edison and Rockefeller began their careers in the aftermath of the civil war and built the industrial complex that withstood the Great Depression and won two world wars. They set up the stock markets, organized the railroads, absorbed millions of immigrants, prevented a labor revolution and moved the financial center of the world from Threadneedle Street to Wall Street. They invented the light bulb, telephone, phonograph, airplane, and the elevator. They made America a world economic and, as a result, military power.
To the author's point I will never forget a time about 17 years ago when I was a talk show host on a major market station in the midwest. The host on before me asked me to come on at the end of his show for a moment or two to preview my upcoming show. In the course of our conversation he asked me what I thought the biggest problem facing the country was. My answer stunned him. His jaw dropped, he was speechless (dead air is a big sin, you know). My answer was MORAL RELATIVISM. What not the economy, taxes, abortion, wascally Republicans, etc? No, I said, you heard me. Our moral relativism clouds all those issues and more. Needless to say, he never had me on his show again.
Not only that, but too many allowed their children to grow up WITHOUT the moral clarity of their parents.
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