Our defining moment
I originally posted this as a comment to TheraP's blog "How Much is Too Much?" With her encouragement, and in recognition of related responses there and elsewhere on TPM, I'm reposting it today.
I've been thinking lately about Ted Kennedy returning to the Senate to vote on the stimulus bill. I'm reminded, among other things, of his eulogy for Bobby, which is one of my favorite speeches.
While the most emotionally compelling passages are Ted's own, much of the eulogy reprises a speech Bobby made in 1966 to a group of young people in South Africa. Addressing a people whose hope was in danger of being extinguished under the crushing mantle of apartheid, Bobby spoke as well to us, a nation at war abroad and divided at home, with millions of its citizens locked in a tragic struggle for equality.
What Bobby said then bears repeating again.
The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society. Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.
Today, a half century later, we are again a nation in crisis. Once again we find ourselves at war. While our soldiers fight in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, as a nation we are locked in struggle to define the future of America.
We are a nation at war with its own ideals. What began as a quest for equality, opportunity and prosperity, of government by and for the people, is at risk of being abandoned in favor of petty partisanship and the endless pursuit of material comfort. A nation that once sought the best of its citizens now asks nothing of most. The wealth created by the hands of many is enjoyed by few. Instead of bravely navigating the current of uncertainty we drift ceaselessly into the past, leaving our children to face the challenges of tomorrow.
This is, as the President has said many times, a defining moment. Change has come to America.
I hope we make the most of it.
There are only a few times in history when all the citizens apprehended danger and moved to change their circumstances - we're not there yet. There is no opposition to the status quo, there is no movement for change and there is no leader willing to fight for it.
February 10, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this.
I agree about this being our defining moment. And I do believe we are beginning to comprehend that it is time to change within ourselves too, accepting responsibility that we can no longer expect so much of others and deliver so little personally.
Rec'd.
February 10, 2009 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm happy to see this here, bluemeanie, and glad to recommend it again. If any leader today can help us as a nation to step up to the plate and seize this moment in history, it is Barack Obama. I think Obama can live up to those words you quote above. And I hope we can as well.
Lovely blog!
February 10, 2009 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
During the past two weeks when I have tried to watch the Republican "leadership" discuss the stimulus package, I have been dumbstruck, saddened and infuriated by their entirely political motivation as compared to a motivation of real bi-partisan patriotism. I have asked myself why they are so blinded, why they seem incapable of rising to the occasion. Perhaps this is why:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/tblake/2009/02/my-book-genesis-of-values
in conjunction with this:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/tblake/2009/02/my-book-genesis-of-values-1.php#comment-3370302
February 10, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I need to read your links in order to do justice to your comment. I do believe that there are a significant number of Congressional Republicans who are trying to delay or significantly water down stimulus in order to gain leverage in the midterm elections.
I don't think this is an effective strategy, but in any event it is reprehensible in the current environment.
I will try to reply more intelligently later.
February 10, 2009 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read both Tom's post and your comment. Tom's thesis interests me greatly, as did your suggestion of literary subtexts for his analysis.
Looking at my son, a seventh grader, and kids up to college age, I'm wondering if we are beginning to see a new social type that prefigures a coming age of post-consumerism. Thanks for pointing me in is direction.
February 10, 2009 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
wwstaebler,
Albion's Seed is a great book. A good companion volume to it is Kevin Phillip's The Cousins' War. It tries to create a time line of how the fissures of different "American cultures" came into conflict again and again.
I think the Republican leadership can be seen through these lenses but it may be that their refusal to share the "recovery" work may be a product of simple denial.
Since most of them identify themselves as Reaganauts, they are perfectly reflected in that passage of Reagan's first inaugural speech where "our economic way of life" is not merely a privilege but a right. Prosperity was not about doing x,y, and z to secure a result but something that would come about naturally if the restrictions upon the right to this way of life were removed.
This entire mindset is not so much negated as rendered irrelevant if the situation becomes very dire.
So I can agree with bluemeanie that the GOP is angling for the mid terms but also think that the elephants are just not capable at this time of believing that events could overturn what politics has not.
February 10, 2009 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great closing line, moat. See my comments in response to Tom Hollenbach's post below.
February 10, 2009 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Moat; I will check out The Cousins' War, the book you recommend.
February 12, 2009 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
The mess is starting to show up on the street. Elcarte, Indiana went from 4%+ unemployment to 14%, IN ONE YEAR. And cable is starting to read off the other locales reflecting double digit unemployment.
President Obama is speaking right now at another town meeting, AFTER the Senate passed his legislation. And he was talking about other measures necessary to get us a foothold in the future.
Nice post.
February 10, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post. I think we're still in the early stages of the defining moment. Things will probably get much worse economically the next few months. We'll see how we define ourselves then.
February 10, 2009 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. But I do think this is a defining moment. I note with interest Reagan's reference to "our economic way of life" in moat's post above. The cynic in me rebels against the notion of any way of life being a "right" if that right is not afforded to all.
Likewise, the conservative notion of economic freedom does not square with our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A man interviewed after the President's town hall in Elkhart summed it up best when he said something to the effect of "some of us just want to be able to go to work and take care of our families." For this man, and millions of others, the pursuit of happiness is not an entrepreneurial venture. It's rewards are elsewhere, and we should honor them.
In a roundabout way, that brings me to my point. I believe that we may be on the cusp of a seismic change in American economic life. The consumer society that emerged after the Second World War and grew, essentially unchecked, for fifty years is winding down, a victim of its own excesses.
We've reached a point where we can no longer afford our relentless quest to satisfy material wants. The emphasis now is on retrenching, on retiring debt, on saving and paying as you go. The values my father shared, and his father before him.
The economy we create once this crisis is behind us will be fundamentally different, I believe: focused on planning for a longer life, on conserving resources, on investments in things with lasting value. Living better on less. I don't think we will go there without a fight, but with vision, foresight and leadership it can be made easier.
February 10, 2009 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink