Commencement Challenges for a New Generation

As a new generation graduates, do you think they are up to the challenges that we face today and are prepared to hand over to them? Have we overwhelmed them? Do all they care about is their music which drives the older generations nuts? Should we be concerned about our expectation of this and future graduating classes as they enter the real world as neophytes? Read the following article as Robert Freer, Jr. gives his surprising assessment of the situation. As a visiting professor at The Citadel he knows the graduates and as President of The Free Enterprise Foundation the knows the challenges.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr, President of the Free Enterprise Foundation

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.(Robt.Frost)

There is an almost desperate fervor to springtime. We celebrate the new milestones in our lives as the memory of winter’s chill becomes the warm glow of the spring’s vernal orb. Gone is the chill of winter’s rain. Hoped for is the warmth of the soft drops of spring and the early morning dew on the fields. It is all quite intoxicating.

Spring’s emphasis on renewal, energy and life’s promise is particularly so for our college graduates striding into whatever life holds. For us it is a time of memories past and the hopes for our “new crop” being seeded into the rows of life’s reality with, in Frost’s words, “the uncertain harvest”…“so far away.”

As I write this, outside my window, The Citadel is completing, its changeover of command from the class of ‘07 to the class of ’08. It is a very moving ceremony with song and the precise movements worthy of a prima ballet company. The very air is redolent of Corps pride and parental satisfaction at a mutual laurel now achieved.

Given my litany in this paper over the past six months on the challenges that bedevil all of us, it is a wonder the graduates don’t all bolt for graduate school to delay their entrance into the responsibility that awaits. My classes and most of you have read my articles in The Mercury tackling a covey of Gorgon sized monsters on their doorstep.

From energy dependence to Medicare and Social Security entitlements; from fratricidal partisanship in our national discourse to immigration legislation gridlock; and the foreign policy miasma of declining respect abroad while faced with a messianic opponent that truly wishes to kill us all, there are no ends of challenges that face them. How ironic, all of this doom just when science is on the verge of giving us the tools to break through the shackles on world health and a greatly extended lifespan, issues that have confronted us since the beginning of recorded time.

Of all the challenges they face, the messianic jihadists may be the most difficult. Our society prides itself on its openness, and we are faced with an opponent that truly wishes our demise. They will use our notions of truth and fairness against us and will turn their own inconsistency in all but their implacable expansion into a tool of their offensive. Like Sun Tzu’s, they believe, “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” And they will if they can.

How do I think this generation will do on these unfinished challenges from our time at bat? I think they are going to do just fine.

The Citadel is a special place. From my close observation of my students in our study of the Ethics of a Leader of Principle, I can tell you that they do “get it.” They understand the challenges and occasional heartache ahead. And they understand the personal strength and courage required to weather life’s ups and downs. They understand goodness for goodness sake, and they cherish this land’s freedom and opportunity just as we do.

They understand that leadership combines head and heart. They also love their families and are not the least bit shy of wanting the same for themselves. They, and I believe most of this year’s crop of college graduates understand it all, but what most encourages me about this generation is their decency.

Though known for her flying skills, Amelia Earhart could also turn a phrase. She once noted, “No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves”

I may not like the crassness and vulgarity of their music, but in their decency and basic goodness, this new generation of leaders is not different from the greatest generation. They have been to our Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Katrina; they have built countless homes there and elsewhere for Habitat for Humanity. They are finding their own way to church and its community support programs. Yes, this generation does understand the power of kindness, and they are making regular “deposits” in their life’s good deeds account early and often.

They also have the courage that Amelia Earhart spoke of when she noted, “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things.” Such a generation will not be defeated, nor will their dreams be denied.

I have loved Bobby Kennedy’s perfection of a Bernard Shaw quote. Kennedy phrased it, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why…I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” This generation has adopted that notion as their own. They, like Kennedy, know “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”

The media uplifts the depraved and downtrodden. We have too many of both, but the glorification of depravity and the sensationalism of the pockets of poverty and the excesses of power by a few, do nothing to solve the situations they depict and fuel the cultural race to the bottom now engaged in by our media. The answer to our pain is in our offspring’s goodness, and in that I trust.

Ronald Reagan in one of my favorite quotes noted, “We have every right to dream heroic dreams…to believe in ourselves…in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us… And after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans!”

This new generation of Americans is reporting for duty, many of them learning what it takes to defend our liberty and some having to pay the ultimate price. They and those here at home are fully ready to carry us forward to complete our dreams and their own, and why shouldn’t we believe they will be successful. They are Americans!

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of the 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 at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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