We live in an old farm house which was built in 1861 and faces the Boston Post Road, a Colonial-era internet. During difficult times such as these, I wonder what the Peck family, who built the house, was thinking during the War Between The States, commonly known in the North as the Civil War. Was a family member fighting somewhere? Did they think President Lincoln was doing a good job?
I am especially thinking about those times this week as the President prepares to give his first State of the Union Address. On Inauguration Day last year many people made reference to Mr. Lincoln and the election of the country's first African-American President. Now, the celebrating and fragile togetherness that forged Obama's victory seem to be disintegrating.
As in Mr. Lincoln's time, we are a country at war; in addition to foreign battlefields, the terrorists have brought the war to our own soil and, more pervasively, into our collective mind. We are also in the midst of political rancor, based on real and imagined differences between Parties, and fueled by an incendiary and arrogant media. Then, we have the proverbial own-worst-enemy: Ourselves. We are, generally speaking, fat, under-educated, over-amused, and prone to sign our lives away to banks.
And then there are the banks themselves, who exist above us all in some parallel universe constructed by Stephen King and Barney Flintstone.
Despite all of this, people from around the world still desperately want to emigrate here and not to China, Brazil, India and certainly not Russia. We remain the world's best hope for capitalism checked by human values and personal freedom checked by a sense of the common good. But, just barely, as in Mr. Lincoln's time.
Part II offers some advice regarding the Speech.
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