9/11

This Sunday's Meet the Press was themed "The Politics of the Economy: What's Holding America Back?" which featured a discussion between an uncharacteristically wide variety of thinkers across the political spectrum. It is, in part, a discussion we desperately need as we're thrown into this political turmoil between the Tea Party Republicans and the rest of the country. We are struggling at this crossroads to decide what kind of country we want to be.

In the past, I've had many disagreements with Thomas Friedman about the role he believes my generation should play as we begin to take over the country. But today, much like that fabled broken clock, I found myself in much agreement as Friedman spoke about the differences between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom Generation. He argues this problem began not in 2008, instead it began after the Cold War ended in 1980:

"We had a generational shift. We went from the Greatest Generation which the philosophy basically was "save and invest" and we are still living off of their saving and investing. To the Baby Boom Generation whose philosophy turned out to be "borrow and spend." And we've really shifted from a generation born in The Depression, World War 2, and the Cold War, these were serious people. They wouldn't think of shutting down the government for a minute, ok. To a generation basically that is much less serious. We've gone from basically the values of the Greatest Generation, which my friend philosopher Doug Simon calls "sustainable values." Values that sustain. To a Baby Boom Generation whose values are situational values. Do whatever the situation allows. You put them all together and I think you really account for a lot of the hole we're in right now structurally."

Friedman goes on to say, that instead of being the drivers of innovation and a world leader that, we spent the 2000's "chasing the losers of globalization instead of the winners," referring to our wars across the Middle East.

Friedman discusses the "Five Pillars" which enabled us to grow and thrive as a country and as a government for 200 years.

"We didn't get here by accident. As a great country. We actually won at every historical turn. How did we win in every historical turn? Because we had a formula for success. That you can actually date back to Hamilton but you certainly see it in Lincoln. It was five pillars: basically educate our people up to and beyond whatever the level of technology is. Whether it's the cotton gin or the supercomputer. Immigration: attract the world's most talented and energetic people. Third, infrastructure. Have the world's best infrastructure. Fourth, have the right rules for enchanting capital formation and risk taking and preventing recklessness. And last, government-funded research. Put those together, stir, bake for 200 years and you get the United States of America.

If you take all five of those, David, and you look at the last decade, which we call 'the terrible 2's,' possibly the worst if not the worst decades in American History. Education (makes a downward gesture). Infrastructure (makes a downward gesture). Immigration (makes a downward gesture). Rules for Capital Investment, how'd you like that sub-prime crisis? (makes a downward gesture) Research and Development (makes a downward gesture). So all five of our pillars of success have been weakened. That's the underlying theme here. And that's what we've got to be looking; that's what the President has got to be out there defending."

Earlier in the program, Friedman said that he believes there are two types of countries: HIEs and LIEs. In Friedman vernacular, that means high imagination enabling countries and low imagination enabling countries and details the ease of building a product and bringing it to market.

"Forget developing and developed. . . . what isn't a commodity is this (Friedman says snapping his fingers meaning ideas). If you look at the countries that are thriving today, look at Israel - start-up nation. We're not going to bail our way out of this crisis. We're not going to stimulate our way out of this crisis. We're ultimately going to educate, imagine, and invent our way out of this crisis."

Unfortunately, it appears that the Friedman is putting the cart before the horse. While the solution is no doubt going to be innovation, with the weakening of those five pillars consistently by conservative politics, where will these educated, imaginative and inventive people going to come from?

In a totally separate portion of the program, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her son, Lt. Joseph K. Goodwin, talked about being part of the generation that began after the Cold War and the impact 9/11 had on what is now termed the Millennial Generation. He believes 9/11 presented a unique opportunity that was missed by leaders. After Pearl Harbor, our country was thrown into a great war in which the entire country was invested. Women immediately took over the work force as every man in the country became a soldier. Children collected rubber bands to be melted down; women drew "seams" on the back of their legs so that silk production could be redirected to parachutes instead of hose; food, gas and even clothing was rationed. In short, everyone sacrificed and contributed towards the war effort.

After 9/11, America was never asked to sacrifice or contribute anything. Lt. Goodwin says this is the reason that he feels we're have so much debt and financial troubles now, because we charged the wars on our credit card. As Friedman would say we allowed the situational values of our leaders enact a policy that cost us so much that our entire country stands on the brink of both an economic and even identity crash. Lt. Goodwin believes if we as a country had been asked to sacrifice as much as they were in WWII that maybe we wouldn't be here.

If Lt. Goodwin believes that 9/11 won't be what defines a generation, perhaps the Millennials can decide to define themselves as the "Ideas Generation" that Friedman says is so needed to build us back into a stable economy and a world leader. In a recent piece by Mike Hais and Morley Winograd, authors of Millennial Makeover and the new book Millennial Momentum, the two authors argue that indeed this generation -- which will comprise more than 1 in 3 adults by the end of the decade -- can be the drivers of this economy if given the tools and authority to do so. Instead of the "taking to the street" philosophy that Friedman has advocated in the past, perhaps he can get on board with more of an innovative bandwagon.

Crossposted from CrooksAndLiars.com

Though he tries to act like he's playing the role of peacemaking conciliator, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat eventually reveals his true feelings:

By global standards, [Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the mosque] may be the model of a “moderate Muslim.” But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

Douthat makes the same error that most other observers are making in failing to see the wide spectrum of beliefs in Islam. Yes, there are those (al-Qaeda) who couch their hatred of America in the religion (just like there are Christians who use their faith to justify their hatred of our government). But there are also Muslims -- in fact, the large majority of those in the United States -- who worship peacefully, just like other the Judeo-Christian worship communities Douthat taps earlier in his piece.

I wouldn't like to be told as a Christian that I could not buy a property in Wichita, Kansas because Scott Roeder, a Christian zealot, killed a doctor who performed abortions. Same goes for Atlanta, Georgia, when Eric Rudolph bombed the Olympic Park during the ceremonies in 1996, to "to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand." But because Christianity is the privileged religion in Douthat's second America, we simply understand that Roeder and Rudolph are right-wing nut jobs that do not represent the wide majority of Christians. The same doesn't go for Muslims.

It was Primary Day, or was supposed to be, seven years ago in New York City, when word came: first, a freak accident; then, clearly something more. By the time the 1010 WINS radio reporter sobbed "Oh my god, my god, it's gone, the tower is gone," we all knew that something new, frightening, unanticipated was happening.

We put the elections on hold, and New Yorkers sought out their loved ones, found their way home, and tuned into their televisions. Except for Lower Manhattan, it wasn't chaos on the streets. It was quiet, almost eerily so -- everyone found the people and places they loved the most and waited.

The next day, as New Yorkers emerged from their apartments, the cloud of smoke hanging above the city and a burning smell present miles from the site, we found our way to common ground, such as the vigils in Union Square. We found each other.

We had put our elections on hold, and engaged in our civic life in other ways -- checking on neighbors, lining up to give blood, sharing tears and looking at photos of missing people in the open churches our parks had become.

At the time, it was unthinkable that life would go on as normal. But 10 days later, a tearful Letterman returned to the air; sooner than that, people had returned to their offices; the subways never stopped running for long.

But our politics didn't get back to normal.