“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw

We are not good because it’s a good idea but because the alternative is intolerable.               

                  Nations, like persons, need a star in their sky by which to navigate. More than a place, nations should be a reason to live. America once was. But we grew pampered and pompous, callous and cruel. During my lifetime we slid from the ideals of Ike and JFK into the mire of me. Once an engine of improvement, government became an expense to deplore. Our nation’s wealth became a grab-fest, the richer the better.

                 Our present depravity is no accident or any one person’s fault. We all invited and permitted it. With nowhere to go, we went nowhere good.

                  America needs purpose to set us straight, an ideal that dissuades our depravity and mutes our whining. We must graduate from poor me to lucky us.

                  Can we refix that star, recover our zeal?

                  Thinking does not reform us but there’s no reform without thinking. Saint Paul en route to Damascus and the Buddha beneath his Bodhi tree were already having a shitty day when enlightenment struck: you don’t discard your old life unless it really chafes. But they sensed their Plan B – if not this, what? Thinking had pointed the path.

                  That’s where morality comes in. Morality is the systematic study of how to be, a gift not a given. Moral leaders may or may not profess an official faith. Emerson was an ordained minister, his pal Thoreau wasn’t, but both were preachers.

                  How should a new America be if we waken from our turpitude? The Nameless One shows us a better way by appalling us with a worse. Mustn’t we

·      Strive to tell the truth

·      Serve our neighbors, not ourselves

·      Treat all with respect

·      Avoid vanity and swagger

·      Strengthen our young

·      Lift the poor

·      Tend the sick

·      Protect our earth

·      Preserve the peace?

What sane soul disputes these aims? Why then are they forgotten, ignored, mocked?

                  Comfort corrodes morality. When the living is easy, why not kick back, relax, let sleeping dogs lie? The moralist is a party poop – can’t someone muzzle him!

                  My generation recoiled from our parents’ exacting patriotism. JFK’s call to sacrifice – “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” – was forged in the furnace of war. Casualties convinced my dad America was a good idea.

                  The small wars of my epoch convinced fewer. (Interesting how many veterans of Vietnam and Iraq are engaged in politics.) We asked what our country could do for us – and enough was never enough.

                  Dread, not bullets, made me a fire-and-brimstone guy. I feared the loss of the serenity and freedom on which I’d come to depend. The privileges I prized – civility, beauty, grace, literature, joy – are fostered by a sensible society. Truth, my guiding star, demands protection by the state. These values were being swept away by a tsunami of greed, animosity, distrust.

                  The more I thought, the angrier I got. I wrote myself into a furor. How could our nation be so avaricious, mendacious, vicious? How could so many leaders be such lickspittles and wimps?   What degeneracy had my generation wrought?

                  Though a peashooter against howitzers, my pen was my only weapon. My ideals were down and dazed, but not out. The Nameless One became my Fuhrer and this my war.

                  It’s invigorating, this combat, in an unwelcome way. Do or die.