That Old "Can Do" Spirit

The late eighteenth century until the mid twentieth century was the era of the dominance of the American Dream. Our creative juices were flowing. There wasn't anything we couldn't accomplish. We conquered a vast continent and turned it into
a giant productive powerhouse with a booming population, burgeoning cities filled with huge business towers, museums, parks and universities. We made scientific discoveries that eliminated plagues, took us beyond the surly bounds of Earth to
other planets, and explored the unknown oceans. Along the way we accumulated a
small empire, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, and a passel of small
islands.
There were some serious stumbles in our passage; the Civil War, a number of lesser
Imperialistic foreign wars, and the Great Depression. Those lapses were more than balanced by our participation in the two great World Wars, in which we were instrumental in defeating powerful dictatorial empires and assuring the flowering of prosperity and democracy in much of the world.
Something happened in the last half of the twentieth century that made us lose our "Can Do" spirit. We became embroiled in a number of conflicts in distant lands where we mistakenly assumed our vital national interests were at stake. Without
genuine public support for those ventures, we lost, and in the process we lost our optimism and faith in America's invincibility. The costs of the Korean, Vetnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in lives, treasure and international esteem are beyond measure and have contributed to the drastic economic decline of our nation. The huge national debt, and unsustainable deficits far into the future have constrained our capacity to invest in modernization of our educational system and maintenance of our infrastructure and manufacturing base, as well as provide universal health care to our citizens.
A public attitude that sacrifice is for someone else, that someone else can fight our wars and pay the costs of our past profligacy, will do nothing to halt our decline into third world status. We need a rebirth of the "Can Do' American spirit and resolve. Partisan bickering makes that unlikely--petty politicians make for petty citizens. We need our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, to be statesmen, to counsel together, not for party advantage, but for the survival of the American Dream!