The Willingness to Work for Solutions
I believe that the world is inherently a very dangerous place, and that things that are now very good can go bad very quickly.
- Newt Gingrich
I’m about to do something that shocks even me. I’m going to agree wholeheartedly with something that Newt Gringich has to say. No, Hell has yet to freeze over, and there has been, to my knowledge at least, no airborne pork sightings as yet. I’ve always felt that Gingrich, if he ever dropped the Conservative mask of superiority, might just have some interesting things to say. Damn if he didn’t go and prove me right.
Amazing what can happen when you drop the partisan rhetoric, isn’t it?
Over the past few weeks, National Public Radio has brought back Edward R. Murrow’s old This I Believe program, and I’ve become a big fan. The concept is pretty simple really:
This I Believe is based on a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. Each day, some 39-million Americans gathered by their radios to hear compelling essays from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller and Harry Truman as well as corporate leaders, cab drivers, scientists and secretaries — anyone able to distill into a few minutes the guiding principles by which they lived. Their words brought comfort and inspiration to a country worried about the Cold War, McCarthyism and racial division.
As I was driving home from work yesterday afternoon, I heard Gingrich deliver his essay. Gingrich actually showed up for the taping of his essay with a prepared text, but he set it aside and decided to speak extemporaneously for 2 1/2 minutes. What I heard from this confirmed slash-and-burn, kill-‘em-and-grill-‘em Conservative absolutely blew me await with it’s thoughtfulness, insight, and complete lack of partisanship. It was refreshing in it’s honesty and lack of political rhetoric.
I watch the bombings in Baghdad and I know they could be happening in Atlanta or in Washington. I look at civilizations that have collapsed: Rome, Greece, China, the Aztecs, the Mayas. And then I look around at our pretensions and our beliefs — that we are somehow permanent — and I am reminded that it is the quality of leaders, the courage of a people, the ability to solve problems that enables us to continue for one more year, and then one more year, until our children and our grandchildren have had this freedom, this safety, this health and this prosperity.
I learned this belief from my stepfather, a career soldier who served America in the second World War, in Korea and in Vietnam. When I was a child, we lived in France — a France that was still suffering from World War II bomb damage; a France that still had amputees from the first World War and special seats on the subway for those who had been wounded in the first and second World Wars; a France that was fighting a war in Algiers; a France that had 100 percent inflation.
We went to the battlefield of Verdun, the greatest battle of the first World War. We stayed with a friend of my father’s who had been drafted, sent to the Philippines, served in the Bataan Death March and spoke of three and a half years in a Japanese prison camp.
And suddenly, as a young man, I realized this is all real: The gap between our civilization, our prosperity, our freedoms and all of those things is the quality of our leaders, the courage of our people, the willingness to face facts and the willingness to work for solutions….
I suppose my perspective is a bit different from most, but I happen to share Gingrich’s view that the world outside our borders (and increasingly within) is a nasty and dangerous place. Having lived and worked in three different war zones (Cyprus, Croatia, and Kosovo), I’ve see up close what human nature is capable of when our baser instincts are allowed free reign. Few Americans have the perspective to truly appreciate just how fortunate we are to live in the safety and security that we do. We leave for work each morning with the virtual certainty that we will return intact to our families each night. We have a greater risk of contracting AIDS, dying in an automobile accident, or being struck by lightning than of dying in a terrorist act.
And yet…and yet, our preceived security and safety is in reality little more than a thin veneer of self-deception and self-delusion. Oklahoma City and 9.11 stand as stark reminders of how thin the reality of our security truly is, and how vulnerable our openness and freedom make us. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned from Oklahoma City and 9.11 is that what we prize the most is also our greatest weakness. This shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to destroy our freedom in order to save it (e.g.- the USA PATRIOT Act), but it does mean that we are in dire need of creative solutions.
America, despite all of it’s warts, is still a place admired for it’s freedom, it’s openness, and it’s willingness to reward dedication and hard work. That there are those outside our borders (and increasingly within) who hate us for what we possess should hardly come as a surprise. That we have it within us to defeat these enemies with the weapons currently at our disposal should be no surprise, either.
Gingrich is right. We do face real challenges, and we do have a wonderful country. If we can somehow find it within ourselves to lose the partisanship and the sense of moral superiority that seems to be standard equipment with any political philosophy these days, we might even be able to come up with a solution.
I wonder if we have it within us?
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