Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Week One: What troubles America most.
So, first, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
America is really a young nation. At a bare two centuries of independence, it hasn’t fully grown used to the spaces inside its skin. Like a youth just after a fresh growth spurt America is gangly, awkward, and often gets in her own way. It’s not something she can avoid, it simply is. The only honorable path around inexperience is through the needed lessons. Like most adolescents, whether consciously or not, she looks to the older more experienced nation to see how they do all those things she has never done. While she’s gained the experience to know right from wrong, good from ill and her likes and wants, as does an adult, her first reaction to things new and strange is still that of a child, fear.
Much as some nations have earned the credibility to be respected, and followed, it is not their job to lead America by her hand. It is ours. That task belongs to others it is yours it is mine. We are America’s guardians. We need to properly and honorably conduct her through the first tremulous steps of adulthood. We need to abandon the silly nursery rhymes of fear, and sing the paeans of reason. To often Americans allow fear to dictate things it ought not to. Gun control, immigration, marriage, proactive wars, why do we do this? We know that someone is less likely to strike at a strong target, and yet we weaken ourselves. We know that almost the entire population of America is descended from recent immigrants, yet we balk at more. We worry so much about what other adults might be doing that we rush to ban it with no thought given to how it would affect us, and which is the greater evil. We are all children. Until Americans grow up, America will not. Unreasoning fear lies not in the province of adulthood.
I claim adulthood.
Much as some nations have earned the credibility to be respected, and followed, it is not their job to lead America by her hand. It is ours. That task belongs to others it is yours it is mine. We are America’s guardians. We need to properly and honorably conduct her through the first tremulous steps of adulthood. We need to abandon the silly nursery rhymes of fear, and sing the paeans of reason. To often Americans allow fear to dictate things it ought not to. Gun control, immigration, marriage, proactive wars, why do we do this? We know that someone is less likely to strike at a strong target, and yet we weaken ourselves. We know that almost the entire population of America is descended from recent immigrants, yet we balk at more. We worry so much about what other adults might be doing that we rush to ban it with no thought given to how it would affect us, and which is the greater evil. We are all children. Until Americans grow up, America will not. Unreasoning fear lies not in the province of adulthood.
I claim adulthood.
