Thursday, October 15, 2009

What have we lost - what are we losing??

It seems to me that we have lost an amazing amount of our personal independence and our confidence in our self-reliance in just my lifetime. It seems to me that we have lost much of the personal, individual drive to succeed that made this country great. When I was growing up, there seemed to be a stronger personal drive to become better. For example, a few years ago I was having dinner with a good friend who I have known since we were kids and who is now very successful and he made the following comment to me - he said, "We were very fortunate to have the friends we had growing up. The peer pressure to keep up with everyone else made me a much better person than I would have been without that peer pressure." I don't see as much of that in people today - today I see many, many, many people just doing what they need to do to get by. Where has the drive to succeed gone that made us great? And please, don't assume that when I talk about the drive to succeed that I am just talking about making more money....I'm talking about the drive to succeed in whatever we do.

Consider the following quote from Abraham Lincoln and the quotes from our founding fathers in my previous posts and compare them with quotes from today's "leaders" and politicians.
We are electing mediocre leaders and we are becoming a mediocre country.

Abraham Lincoln said the following:
"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift up the wage earner by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away peoples' initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."

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