By Monte M. Korn
We are the greatest generation the world has ever seen!
The brightest students from all over the world came to study with the world’s intellectual elite at our colleges and universities.
We are still the world’s greatest generation, the few of us who remain, and with God’s help our children and our grandchildren will continue to be the greatest generations...if only we can instill in them the desire to study, to learn and to be number one mentally, intellectually, physically, and economically. To hell with the cost! Education is the answer for a secure future for the coming generations.
If we lose this battle of the minds, it may be our best battle, but our last battle, and our glorious way of life may be gone forever in the rubble of intellectual defeat!
(The following is taken from an op-ed piece written for the New York Times by Thomas L. Friedman. To view the entire piece, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28friedman.html.)
“On Nov. 19, Rasmussen Reports published results from a national telephone poll that showed that 47 percent of America’s likely voters said the nation’s ‘best days are in the past,’ 37 percent said they are in the future. Sixteen percent were undecided. Just before President Obama was inaugurated, 48 percent said our best days were still ahead and 35 percent said they had come and gone. This is a disturbing trend.
“I think what is driving people’s pessimism today are two intersecting concerns. The long-term concern is that people intuitively understand that what we need most now is nation-building in America. They understand it by just looking around at our crumbling infrastructure, our sputtering job-creation engines and the latest international education test results that show our peers out-educating us, which means they will eventually out-compete us. Many people understand that we are slipping as a country and what they saw in Barack Obama, or what they projected onto him, was that he had both the vision and capability to pull America together behind a plan for nation-building at home.”
Though President Obama has been a very articulate president, he missed the boat completely when he wasted a precious amount of time, money, and effort seeking to pass a health bill when the whole country called out for jobs and work projects building roads, clearing forests, repairing our infrastructure, rebuilding our rusting, rotting bridges, replacing rust-clogged water pipes and water lines...building modern high-speed railroads between our major cities...building new grammar schools, intermediate schools and high schools providing our children with the finest equipment to grow intellectually and physically.
“But I think they understand something else: that we are facing a really serious moment. We have to get this plan for nation-building right because we are driving without a spare tire or a bumper. The bailouts and stimulus that we have administered to ourselves have left us without much cushion. There may be room, and even necessity, for a little more stimulus. But we have to get this moment right. We don’t get a do-over. If we fail to come together and invest, spend and cut really wisely, we’re heading for a fall — and if America becomes weak, your kids won’t just grow up in a different country, they will grow up in a different world.
“We have to manage America’s foreign policy, and plan its rebuilding at home, at a time when our financial resources and our geopolitical power are more limited than ever while our commitments abroad and entitlement promises at home are more extensive than ever.
“That is why I believe most Americans don’t want a plan for deficit reduction. The Tea Party’s vision is narrow and uninspired. Americans want a plan to make America great again, and at some level they know that such a plan will require a hybrid politics — one that blends elements of both party’s instincts. And they will follow a president — they would even pay more taxes and give up more services — if they think he really has a plan to make America great again, not just bring him victory in 2012 by 50.1 percent.
“That hybrid politics will require hard choices: We need to raise gasoline and carbon taxes to discourage their use and drive the creation of a new clean energy industry, while we cut payroll and corporate taxes to encourage employment and domestic investment. We need to cut Medicare and Social Security entitlements at the same time as we make new investments in infrastructure, schools and government-financed research programs that will spawn the next Google and Intel. We need to finish our work in Iraq, which still has the potential to be a long-term game-changer in the Arab-Muslim world, but we need to get out of Afghanistan — even if it entails risks — because we can’t afford to spend $190 million a day to bring its corrupt warlords from the 15th to the 19th century.”
What has all of this got to do with where we, the greatest generation, have been and where the handful of us who remain think we are going?
For over a century, the brightest students from China and India have left their homelands to study at such great American institutions as MIT and Cal Tech.
But now, something amazing has been happening. While the Americans have been sleeping, the brightest students from the United States have been heading for India and China to study with the brightest minds of the East. Have we lost it? If we have lost it, why are we losing it? Is it too late to win the race of the great minds of the 21st Century?
How we respond to the challenge, only time will tell!
Good luck children and grandchildren of the greatest generation. The time has come to glue your backside to your chairs and study and learn and work. The time for fun and games is over. The moment of truth has arrived.
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Monte M. Korn is an attorney practicing law in West Bloomfield, has been a member of the State Bar of Michigan since 1942, and is a member of the Probate and Elder Law Sections of the State Bar. Monte Korn is the talk show host of “Open Line with Monte Korn” on radio station WNZK am690 every morning at 11 a.m. He can be reached at (248) 933-4334.
The material in the above article is the research of Monte M. Korn. The Detroit, Oakland County, and Macomb County Legal Newspapers have no responsibility therein.
