If you haven’t read the quote that was just posted here last, it is something worth pondering for a minute. I guess the logical question to ask next is, “What’s changed since then?” Of course, a lot, but we can probably agree that priorities, expectations, motivations, and standards are not what they used to be. Do we even know why those presidents were such great leaders? Or does our educational system say it’s enough to know just the years they were in office? That, and memorizing the order of presidents was pretty much all I needed to know to pass the presidential section in my history classes once upon a time! So what contitutes a world-class leader anyway?
I think that even if there are 480 world-class leaders out there today, they are not promoted to the top, because either people don’t recognize a Thomas Jefferson when they see one, or because people today don’t value the leadership of Madison, Washington, and Adam in today’s politics. However, if the FBI is now authorized to extract any piece of essential information from anybody’s home PC, I would sure like to know that our nation is electing the most ethical, moral people possible to lead this country!
Instead, our presidential candidates deliver empty inspirational talks, hypocrisy, and pragmatic agendas, regardless of whether it is the best thing for America; this is a sure way to gain popularity and a majority vote today! So what do I mean by pragmatic agendas?
Let’s take President Bush for instance who recently bailed out a few hundred people by intervening in the bad loans they got themselves into. If the government has the power to break a bank’s loan contract, what will it do next? And, long-term I think this retracting of loan agreements will do more harm than good because banks will be ultra-careful next time they give out loans. Even more people than the initial several hundred will not qualify for a future home loan, and then what will the government step in and do to fix this problem? This is not the concept of government that our founding fathers had in mind.
Or let’s take our former President Clinton who bailed out many criminals who were murdering in America and got caught. Instead of going through our legal system’s jury, Clinton sent them all back to Puerto Rico scot free where they came from. Why? Well, we can only speculate, but justice was not the reason to be sure! Of course, the Clinton’s are heros in Puerto Rico which will help Hilary’s votes hugely this year. Self-promoting pragmatic decision making is what I call it. It has nothing to do with justice or protecting the innocent.
I believe what we lack in leadership today is like a mirror reflecting our nation’s lack of conviction and backbone in areas of integrity to the republic upon which America was established. Why do we sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” or pledge allegiance to “the republic for which it stands”? If these questions interest you, than this is a good article to read!
What we need is to reshape our concept and understanding of America by searching and studying what made it strong to begin with. Then, we might have a chance at electing someone with the integrity of George Washington.
