They were raised during the Great Depression and were therefore hardened by struggle and want. When the world needed them to intervene to help stop Fascism they were ready and able, tough enough and of sufficient character to pass the test. Some have taken to calling them the "Greatest Generation." From everything I can tell, they have earned the name.
During the course of World War II, 35,946 United States military pilots lost their lives in accidents. In just one year, 1943, 850 died while on home soil training to fly just one airplane, the B-24 bomber. But that's just one category within one country. Experts now cite the total number of World War II deaths at around 72 million!
Deaths are one statistic, but suffering is another category that statistics can't really measure. How many families lost loved ones? How many homes were destroyed? How many starved, became orphaned, or became refugees? Can anyone truly count the cost of such a calamitous time?
In America, the World War II generation came home and tried plugging back into normal lives. Only what they found was anything but normal. The catastrophies around the world depleted the globe of its industry, and the United States quickly filled the void. As a result, the economy boomed. TImes got very good. Luxuries were invented almost daily. Conveniences abounded. The children of the Greatest Generation had quite a different life from their parents, and when "their war" came (Viet Nam), the Hippie movement began. Politics and just-war theories aside, it is unarguable that the mindset of the sixties generation was radically different from that of the forties. America had somehow fundamentally changed.
This new generation then grew up and took their turn at the helm of society. The most radical among them, those whose thoughts and world-view were as far as possible away from those of the Greatest Generation, tended to fill positions in universities, journalism, the arts, Hollywood, government, and education. In large part, they bacame the thought-shapers for the next generation. We are now reaping the harvest of that sewing.
The Founding Fathers of America believed very strongly in education. In fact, some of them went so far as to say that our Republic would not stand if not run by an educated populace. If you read their works closely, however, you will discover that education for education's sake isn't what they were talking about. They weren't concerned with the amount of education, but the quality of the thinking that resulted from a proper education. In other words, they knew that if the American people ever got to where they didn't understand the fundamentals of freedom, they would lose it.
In an earlier post I gave a paraphrase from Thomas Jefferson. The actual quote is, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
We now have a voting public that has drifted so far away from the basic understandings of the principles of freedom understood by our founders that we are in the red zone. Even the father of Communism, Karl Marx, was smart enough to see what would happen. He said, "Democracy cannot long survive, people will vote themselves all the money in the treasury." Only he was off the mark. In the United States (which was founded as a Republic but is now called a Democracy by most of its people), the "people" have figured out how to vote themselves Trillions of dollars that aren't even in the treasury! And we've elected politicians who are only too happy to keep the printing presses running to feed our sloth.
We have somehow crafted a national mindset largely opposed to the thought processes that shaped our nation and supported the heroics of the Greatest Generation. We have indocrtinated almost two generations with a weak, socialistic mindset. If mis-education got us into this mess, proper education can get us out of it. We must once again teach the truth of freedom and develop an understanding of its principles. We still have a choice, but time is running out.
In the words of Sage Francis, "The waterline is rising, and all we do is stand there."
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