Peggy Noonan recently wrote an article for the WSJ – American’s Crisis of Character. To quote her “…People in politics talk about the right track/wrong track numbers as an indicator of public mood. Only 24% of Americans feel we’re on the right track as a nation. That’s a historic low. Political professionals tend, understandably, to think it’s all about the economy, unemployment, foreclosures – we’re going in the wrong direction. I’ve long thought that public dissatisfaction is about more than the economy, that it’s also about our culture, or rather the flat, brute, highly sexualized thing we call our culture. Now I’d go a step beyond that. I think more and more people are worried about the American Character – who we are and what kind of adults we are raising.
The story goes on to site all the ways we could view our leaders as questionable role models. A recent TV interview of three men – one an economist, one a priest and one a political analysis – were deeply concerned about the distrust of Religion, Politics and the Economy. They finalized their thoughts by agreeing it was not the people as a whole, but the so called Leadership that create the discontent and distrust. As an example: We are not happy with a religion- we are disillusioned by the leaders and key evangelists. We are happy to live in a democracy – we are disillusioned by a polarized political system in which a President owes too much to too many special interest persons/groups that helped them get elected – to truly concentrate on the main street of voters. We are unhappy to live in a country where so much money is paid to the top executives who have asked their employees to work harder for less money without returned financial recognition for their loyalty when times are better.
Peggy Noonan is right when she says; something seems to be going terribly wrong. Maybe we have to stop and think about this.