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Jay McDonough
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The Trappings of Pride
I've always found it curious that we don't take the easy path in these cases; studying systems more efficient or successful than ours and just copy their methods. We don't, though. We have this tendency to want to re-invent the wheel, develop our own "better" way, spend a bunch of dough and, more often than not, find ourselves in the same spot we were before.
If you wanted to become a great jazz trumpet player, you'd study Miles Davis and try to develop his technique. If you wanted to become a world class bowler, Rhino Page would be a role model. If you wanted to develop into a first class poet, you would study the art and mechanics of Robert Hass. Common sense, right?
But, when it comes to really important stuff like our children's education and our health care system we pass on the common sense approach and end up with No Child Left Behind nonsense and an unbridled health care system that seems bound to insure only healthy, rich people.
Along the same lines, Thomas Friedman has written a big, important Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times. He's returning from a sabbatical to write a book and offers up a stark perspective about our country's general health.
Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I’ve had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.
We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”
There's plenty of opportunity to change things. Just need some real, common sense leadership.Topics: Miscellaneous
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