I read an article the other day which began with a guy reminiscing about “the good old days”. The first thing that became painfully apparent was that I’m getting older faster than I care to realize. The next thing in evidence was, the cherished days to which he referred are relative and, eventually, these will be “the good old days” for some other poor dolt of limited perspective. Anyway, he wrote:
“Kids today have it so easy. Back in my day, we didn’t have iPods. We had portable CD players. You don’t know back breaking labor until you’ve had to carry around an entire booklet of CDs! Also, we didn’t have ‘blinged out cell phones.’ We had regular cell phones that were slightly larger and not jewel encrusted. See what I mean?”
Da-a-a-a…no, I don’t. Back in my day, I remember carrying a portable phonograph (which weighed about 20 or 30 pounds) in one hand and a box of records weighing twice as much in the other. I usually made two trips. The distance I could cover was about three blocks and if I needed to make a phone call along the way, I stopped at a phone booth! If I had to hear music as I walked, I sang (an act which nurtured within me an almost religious respect for silence).
The point here is not how many gray hairs I may have left in my head or that some kid may have it easier than I did. Rather, once viewed in a broader life context, this sort of limited frame of reference loses any humor and reveals the potential dangers of not being informed about events that occurred before “your day”. With a lack of curiosity, or at least a nodding acquaintance with recent history, how can anyone be expected to realize that we’re reliving a 21st Century version of Europe 1936, and everything that portends? How can one so uninformed grasp the failed policies of appeasement and isolationism, the humiliation of defeat or the glory of victory? Some schools don’t even keep score at the local baseball game anymore, for fear of injuring some kid’s self esteem. How can that kid understand winning? How can he or she understand the fatal flaws inherent with socialized programs or the disasters narrowly avoided as Communism overspread the world during the cold war? How do these kids comprehend the Holocaust, the brutality of Hitler or the plight of Britain under Chamberlain? It’s all just something in the history books, in many cases rewritten to address political agendas; in most cases simply left unread. Where’s the curiosity?
When the answer to a question is unknown, the lamest response I’ve ever heard is, “Gee, that was before I was born”. You hear it on quiz shows and man-on-the-street interviews, but it’s a specific generational attitude encountered nearly everywhere. It seems to me, I know more about things that happened before I was born that after! Those with no excuse at all are individuals who have experienced significant historical events, know their weaknesses and witnessed their failures. In some cases, they’re the same people who legislated them into existence, yet still gripe about them. They stand up in Congress or preach on a street corner, year after year, whining and moaning about the same old ills, instead of correcting them before they develop into major maladies.
Until our newer generations develop an interest in what was, until those with historical savvy step up and apply it to what will be, until everyone pulls together and places country above self, America will continue her decline. Make no mistake, this nation is tearing itself apart. What freedoms are not being relinquished are being legislated away and as we get weaker, the terrorists get stronger. Now, they are playing with nuclear weaponry that didn’t exist in 1936. That makes the Islamo-Nazis more dangerous than the Nazis of the Third Reich. They have mastered the classic strategy of divide and conquer. A few ragtag fanatics, with a handful of explosives, have already managed to hijack many of our nation’s leaders and divide the greatest nation on earth. What the terrorists do not destroy from without, our Socialist politicians are trying to destroy from within and both enemies at the gates will change our lives forever. Do we simply surrender, as the political elite in Washington propose, or do we dig in our heels for the cause of liberty like the great generations before us?.
It’s not a matter of Democrat or Republican, Right or Left. It’s a matter of right and wrong, good versus evil. As I’ve often said, Americans don’t like to lose. The American people are not tired of war, they are tired of not winning. Those of us who have known the taste of victory had better recall it. Those who do not know it had better discover it, even if they have to venture back to a time before iPods, CDs and records.
R.S.F.
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