You are invited to read this commentary from the Free Enterprise Foundation. It will make you think!

Reflections

“…For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” I Corinthians: 13

As we age we are adding to the basis for turning knowledge into wisdom. There simply is no substitute for experience to enlighten your intellect on the difference between mere brainpower and how its product turns out in the Petri dish of life. Thinking is a lonely activity. It is a solo act and can yield great results, but in our youth, we do see through a glass darkly. We suffer from an intellect uncurbed by the ebb and flow of life, its perils and rewards.

While resisting the urge to be carried away with the “wisdom” of my message to my classes at The Citadel, I constantly must remind myself that even my graduate classes haven’t experienced the 40’s or the years immediately after “The Greatest Generation” returned home to a transformed America with women having held the fort, driven the rivets, made the tires, ferried the bombers and been sole CEO of the home and hearth while our men were winning the war. They have also missed growing up in the 50’s with the barest beginnings of the technology revolution of the transistor and color television. Korea and Vietnam are just place names without the ferment of the age, and to them the Cold War is just a story.

Without the memory of huddling in the hall during air raid drills in the 50’s, today’s evolving majority does not have a clue about the grounding of our defense posture, nor how our dependence on oil, Mideast oil at that, came to have so much influence on our lives. They have no idea what the effect on our upbringing was of being children of parents who survived the great depression of the 30’s. They also haven’t a clue at the transforming effect on our culture caused by “The Pill.” And they certainly have no basis to understand the discontent that comes from having so much from which to choose and the emptiness material pursuit has brought with it to our fractured families.

No, even those in their 40’s, now making up the vital engine driving our nation, don’t have the context of what came before, and we are the poorer for the lack of vital bridges from those with experience to those now calling the shots. But if they don’t have the context, it is for us to create that bridge, for without it, they cannot put into perspective the period we have just gone through. Together we are both coping with unprecedented demographic forces of social, governmental and financial change, and it is for our elder generation to provide the living history of simpler times to set the Polaris for our nation’s return to the ways of our founders.

Politically the new majority cannot imagine a time of political comity and good feeling when the annual baseball game between the members of the House of Representatives and Senate was truly a fun affair not a grudge match, and they cannot understand why we are out of sorts at the abandonment of timeless values in place of their weathervane in a storm. They muse, “Why are you worried about us? Whatever is wrong, we can fix it tomorrow.”

Well, it may be too late to fix it. The historical basis for us to construct the nation we envision has been lost to erosion caused by our own neglect. For too long we have permitted technology, not the parent, to be custodian of our children’s values and education. Latch key children are more than an isolated phenomenon. Two career families have become the rule and created insufficient opportunity for parental attention to family values. Economic stress, if not outright hardship, has diverted our focus on equipping our citizens of tomorrow with the emotional durability and historical and philosophical grounding to perpetuate the American dream machine.

South Carolina, with just under half of our kids not graduating from high school may be near the bottom of the barrel, but many states aren’t doing much better. While we descend into sloth, the emerging nations are producing millions of adults with training and skills that are possessed only by the top one percent of our emerging adults. And their emerging adults are hungry for the affluence we take for granted.

The nation that produced that affluence permitted a simple non denominational prayer to begin the day in public schools. That nation began the day with a pledge before our nation’s flag. It featured an emphasis in our social studies in the primary grades of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson and our pilgrim fathers. It was not embarrassed to celebrate the values of the Ten Commandments. It instilled a pride in our nation’s progress without apologizing for our need to triumph over our failings of ages past.

If we are to have any hope in reversing the failing dollar and in restoring America’s productivity as an exporting nation not just a consumer; if we are to restore that sense we’re on the move forward, it is in education of our young. This is a non partisan issue that unites all poles of our political spectrum. It must be the bridge we embrace to return America to the winning track. Such an education must instill the skills required for this century while not neglecting the values of our founders.

What good is great technical skill without a proper respect for those values founded in the Ten Commandments which keep our civilization vital? Today we think that the ruling on school prayer is of long standing, when in fact it is a product of the mid twentieth century disregarding the rulings of 150 years of our history and disregarding the practice and sense of our Founders.

I am calling all seniors back to the fray. Our nation is under threat, and you are needed to provide common sense to our plan for survival. If you are retired and living in a retirement community talk about this issue. Reach out to your families and let them know your concern. Work with churches and other charities that play a constructive role in your community in instilling winning values. Support candidates for office who reflect not only in their rhetoric but in their lives these same values. As Ben Franklin warned us, our precious Republic is ours only so long as collectively we can keep it.

Copyright © 2009 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.