Let’s start with a tribute to Christine O’Donnell’s Delaware victory, shall we?
See what I did there?
Well if not, here’s someone else’s words, verbatim, that mirror what I wrote, at the University of Delaware’s Review, in 1995, claiming America was on a log flume toward Roman Empire disaster…
… it is a microcosm of a larger problem we have not faced honestly as we have dug out of this recession: We had a values breakdown — a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. Wall Street may have been dealing the dope, but our lawmakers encouraged it. And far too many of us were happy to buy the dot-com and subprime crack for quick prosperity highs.
Ask yourself: What made our Greatest Generation great? First, the problems they faced were huge, merciless and inescapable: the Depression, Nazism and Soviet Communism. Second, the Greatest Generation’s leaders were never afraid to ask Americans to sacrifice. Third, that generation was ready to sacrifice, and pull together, for the good of the country. And fourth, because they were ready to do hard things, they earned global leadership the only way you can, by saying: “Follow me.”
Contrast that with the Baby Boomer Generation. Our big problems are unfolding incrementally — the decline in U.S. education, competitiveness and infrastructure, as well as oil addiction and climate change. Our generation’s leaders never dare utter the word “sacrifice.” All solutions must be painless. Which drug would you like? A stimulus from Democrats or a tax cut from Republicans? A national energy policy? Too hard. For a decade we sent our best minds not to make computer chips in Silicon Valley but to make poker chips on Wall Street, while telling ourselves we could have the American dream — a home — without saving and investing, for nothing down and nothing to pay for two years. Our leadership message to the world (except for our brave soldiers): “After you.”
Read all of Thomas L. Friedman’s NY Times column here. Because he’s right.
Others …
• Archaeologists believe a newly discovered 1,100-year-old tomb in Mexico may hold clues to finally understanding the decline of the Mayan empire. [Sky News]
• [T]he N.F.L. has little incentive to undermine its own business model for television, which relies on selling the rights to televise games. This reluctance illustrates the difference between a technology like 3-D TV, which does not threaten the television industry, and the Internet, which has upended every sector of the media industry it has touched.
If football fans — or movie buffs, or reality television enthusiasts — could buy only the shows they wanted, then the current business model could unravel in the same way that the availability of music online has undermined the music industry. [NY Times]
Orange-White Power
• Mr. Boehner won some of his first national headlines in 1996 after he was caught handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Republicans on the House floor. [NY Times]
• A physics teacher at an elite Philadelphia magnet school has been charged with selling a pound of marijuana outside a suburban high school – and illegally possessing a 9mm handgun when police arrested him. [Philly.com]