A Challenge for Our Times...

If I could, I would send this essay off to every school, make sure every immigrant applying for citizenship read it and that every parent raising a child and every businessman operating a business got to read it...

It is disturbing to learn how many people don't seem to care about our government, how it operates, the documents that serve as its foundation, and the commitments they made and the hardships they endured to start this most noble experiment in government that ever existed...
This essay is a wake up call! And it may be the very last one...

Les Aaron



The Little Engine That Could

How many of us remember the story of the little train engine that tried so hard, that it was able to climb mountains that everyone thought impossible!

In a way, that was the story of America’s spirit. Born in adversity, a nation that had become the model for the rest of the world—a country that served as a model for what could be.

The message in that story was always hope.

Today, as a people we seem to have lost that hope; we have become the little engine that couldn’t. Whereas six years ago, we were looked up to by the rest of the world and we possessed the feeling that we could do virtually anything; today, we look around ourselves and wonder if we can do anything right.

All we need do is look at the things we have taken on in order to get an inkling of what it seems we have failed; not one time, but it seems many times. And we seem to have gotten into a rut that is felt by the entire country.

Four years ago, we set out on a mission to end what our leaders called “terrorism.”
We began with a specific target and we began this mission with great hope and expectation.
It has turned out that we have strayed from our original purpose. And we have become engaged in a mission that bears little connection to our original purpose. While we can’t seem to see the distinction, we carry on as if it doesn’t matter if we are wrong—if we lack that purpose—as long as we get that job done… A purpose that originally had at its target the head of a group of men who were out to attack our country has turned into an attack on 26 million people who had nothing to do with what our leadership calls “terrorism.” In the process, our confidence, our will, our sense of ‘rightness’ has suffered in ways we may not totally fully understand. And it has caused great unrest in this country.


Seemingly, it was the beginning for many other things that we have demonstrated that we are not master of despite our strength, our money and our size. In the process, we have lost our “luster” and ability to climb tall mountains.

Consider what began with Nature’s reaction to our tampering with the environment. This past year, at its very beginning, she struck back with a vengeance wrecking havoc everywhere—from Tsunamis to earthquakes to great storms that beset the world.

In Asia, more than 200,000 people died as a result of a tsunami the likes of which had not been seen for literally centuries….In South Asia, in the area of where Pakistan and India border each other, an earthquake caused the loss of life of tens of thousands with literally millions without food or shelter.

In America, we suffered a storm that virtually destroyed one of our greatest cities.

In Asia, everyone mobilized to help in the suffering; money was raised; and the fathers of the country became instantly engaged in a mission of humanity seldom seen before. In Pakistan and India, countless organizations gathered to do what they could.

In America, our response paled by comparison. It took nearly a week of seeing people without food, water or shelter to become partially mobilized and cognizant of the great hurt being felt by those who always suffer during the hardest of times. Instead of rushing in with their arms full of water and food, our initial images were of our soldiers cautiously entering a devastated city with their guns at the ready. It was the most troubling of scenes recognizing that nowhere else in the world had people been so detached from the root cause, so incapable of mustering the kind of aid that these people cried out for at a time of their anguish and seemingly so lacking in compassion.

The War, the scene of devastation in New Orleans and our failure to mobilize the necessary resources has caused us to take a closer look at our country and how it is being run in the face of a serious challenge that has still not been met. Our reaction, more than anything else, has become the litmus test of our confidence in our ability to meet what seems like larger challenges that threaten our very survival as a nation and as a people.

We see these challenges in the realization that everywhere we look we see inefficiency and corruption.

As a result of our failure in New Orleans, we have taken a second look at things: Are we really any safer than we were before 9-11? Today, four years later, we discover that we still do not have a workable plan. That money for security has been doled out around the country in an act of patronage that is inexcusable. Las Vegas received tens of millions of dollars to protect it against invasion. The money for protection of the target areas, has been used to provide air conditioning for garbage trucks in Newark and bullet proof vests for police dogs in the mid-west. First responders still do not have the communications network that will allow them to speak to each other.

In looking back to other incidents, we realize that despite our best efforts, somebody had managed to spread a dangerous toxin through envelopes to liberal broadcasters and democratic representatives in Congress. Nobody has come close to the source even though very few people have such skills or access to the kind of labs that could process such toxic materials and the FBI, with its vast resources and unlimited funding has been unable to shed any light on this incident.

We see corruption in high places. We see money being defrauded from poor people. We see our business leaders influencing legislation for their own ends. We see members of the religious right buying influence at the highest levels that has resulted in the misappropriation of tax money to fund private interests. We see religion, or what poses as religion, becoming involved in issues that it has no business being involved in that literally challenge the notion of separation of church and state. We see important jobs treated as sinecures for unworthy appointees whose only talents seem to have derived from their friendship with leaders who have also benefited from their political affiliations. It is ironic how this might have been spawned by a book that was written to end corruption in government. Nevertheless, it has turned us introspective causing us to see all that has gone wrong when we have lost noble purpose.

For it is our documents, our generosity, our noble purpose that differentiates us as a people. It has given us hope and the confidence that we can work miracles, miracles that benefit mankind. And in many cases, we can point to a legacy of great achievement that has become the example for a world seeing guidance and a noble purpose.

Towards that end, we have put an end to dictators attempting the world’s take over; we have rebuilt Europe through the Marshall Plan; we have put an end to Russia’s ambitions and a Cold War that gripped us for forty years; our institutions of learning have served as a magnet to the rest of the world; our industrial and technological know-how have encouraged others to acknowledge our own capabilities as a people to turn dross into spun gold.

Where are we now in that dream?

For most of us, it seems as if we are lost; we have lost our direction and walking around blindly in search of ourselves. In this, we have alienated most of the rest of the world with our tough talk and our failure to make good things happen. We see it in the job market where good jobs are being off to countries that imprison their peoples for their beliefs. We have seen it in our failing educational system that has not allowed us to produce the technical skills to compete on the world stage. We have seen it in the thinking at the top that has resulted in our erosion of leadership skills in science and technology. We have seen in our inability to compete effectively world-wide; we have seen it in the growing economic deficits with the rest of the world—where we are perceived as an exporter of raw materials and scrap and an importer of finished manufactured goods. This posits us not as the greatest economy in the world but as a Colony with all that it infers.

It seems that in a matter of years, we have descended from the world’s leading power into a colony that cannot even attend to the matter of saving those beset by hardship in its own cities. Shame on us.

In the light of these realities, one might ask where do we go from here.

At this writing, we do not know the answer to that question. Will we find national purpose? A purpose that both enobles us and reestablishes the standard of excellence that allowed us to lead the world with our industry and our ideas?
Will we find in ourselves the ability to become all that we can be?

We don’t know. We do know that we are at a cross-roads. That we as a people must come together for common cause, confront the realities of what we have become and face up to the challenges and the demands which must be met. We can only do that if we believe that within us lies the potential for greatness again.

How we handle these interim challenges will in the long term determine what we become and whether we even survive.

It seems a good time for introspection. It seems a good time to probe within ourselves to see whether we are still motivated to resurrect our talents and skills to the noble purposes of the world. In this, whether by choice or default, only America has proven equal to these challenges. The question remains are we ready to jettison the negativity and assume that burden again?

Les Aaron
Consultant to Business and Industry