No lessons learned

It is axiomatic and undisputed by anyone over the age of 19 that we learn from our mistakes.

Imagine for a moment that your every indiscretion, your every impetuous misadventure, was somehow negated, erased or actually rewarded. Imagine having access to vast sums of money and influential friends in high places. Imagine powerful political movements willing to guarantee your success by one means or another.

Now imagine the level of your intellectual, emotional and spiritual development under these distorted conditions. Imagine the tortured version of reality. Deprived of the experience born of suffering the consequences of your own poor decisions, what could you possibly offer the world in terms of a valid life perspective?

How could you understand the value of rules, of law, when none have applied to your own life? How could you be expected to recognize the necessity of government itself when that entity has represented nothing but an obstacle, a restraint to aforementioned powerful political movements?

Imagine yourself a wise, effective world leader in possession of a personality and an intellect forced by these circumstances. Unimaginable, isn’t it?

David D. Hirni
Kansas City

Comments

[jack]

Maybe we need to find a way to weed out those proclaimg "reconquista". It means that Mexico will reconquer the south western United States. To me that is preaching invasion and violent overthrow of our governmnet. I have trouble throwing out the welcome mat from those that think they should "take back" chunks of America and make those a part of Mexico.

Also, if all we want is cheap labor, we can go back as little as two generations to see what that brings. A mandatory 60 hour work week, six days per week. If you were one minute late, you were fired. If you were sick, you were fired. If you were injured on the job there was no medical care, no nothing. And if you couldn't work the next day because of your injury, you were fired. This was the world of my Grandfather.

One of my Grandfathers was a truck driver in Des Moines in those days. During the 1930s there were pitched battles in the streets of Des Moines between employees and government protected "strike breakers".

What were the "socialistic" demands of the employees? A standard 55 hour workweek. Half a day off on Saturday. The right to be sick three days per year without being fired. The right to be up to three minutes late without being fired. The right to have their injuries treated if they were hurt on the job. And, of course, there was their demand for $0.35 per hour wages. Please note, they weren't asking for vacation days or holidays or even to be paid while off work due to an on the job injury. They just wanted to be able to get their jobs back after they recovered.

Do those that keep pushing the losest possible wage scenario really want to go back to that? That is essentially the way the "illegals" are treated. Does anyone think this should be the standard?

[jack]

JJ: Who said anything about T.R. being anti-business? He was anti-monopoly, anti-sweatshop, anti-child labor and anti-abusive labor practices. That didn't make him anti-business.

He believed that business could succeed without people starving while working full time. Rather novel in his time. He believed that there should not be a very few, very rich and very powerful, essentially in control of the national economy. He believed that the teaming slums of his era were not a necessity for business to succeed.

You might want to go to the website for Mount Rushmore and read about why T.R. was chosen to be one of the four faces. It might give you a new perspective on him.

As far as your "understanding" of small business. I was raised in one and have now started two. The most recent opened it's doors on 02/01/06. I am well aware at the forces at work trying to keep me from succeeding. I am also well aware that the current administrations policies are harmful to the very small businesses they claim to support. I think T.R. would be appalled by what our current President is doing.

And as far as foreign policy is concerned, I think T.R. would be appalled by that do. T.R. was no shrinking violet. He reached for and acheived great things. His legacy was a country of a confident swagger, rather than our current international arrogance.

The Dems at this point are no heros to me. They look to me like the party of all brains and no huevos. The Reps seem to me to be the exact opposite. All huevos, no brains. T.R. conducted a policy of huevos & brains. Something we need to find in a leader once again.

[JUNGLEJACK]

Jack - Unfortunately we have no idea how T.R. would handle problems in the 21st century. I'm not so sure he would be as anti-business as you suggest in this era of the frivilous lawsuit. Anyone who dares start their own business today has to be ready to take it on the chin from every direction, go into hock and hope they show a meger profit before they go bankrupt. And heaven help them if their TOO successful - instead of being held up as a role model, they're likely to be labelled as a "winner of life's lottery" and treated with disdain for having the nerve to achieve the American dream. Somehow I don't think that's what ol' Teddy had in mind.

[Engineer]

And here all the time I thought he was talking about Al Gore. Or Ted Kennedy, who we still have to worry about.

[jack]

I've been reading a biography of one of our President's claimed "heros", Teddy Roosevelt. It amzes me how similar the backgrounds of the two men are. Both camefrom "old money", patrician stock. Both from a world where wealth, power and influence were a given and a birth-right. Both from a "world view" of social darminism, where the wealth of a person proved their worthiness, intellect and not just right but "need" to lead the little people.

But there is one glaring difference. T.R. had an unsolvable, life long problem that he had to fight to overcome on a daily basis. No instant cures from Billy Graham. Just hard, daily work in an effort to minimize that which could never be overcome. His asthma.

This appears to have given him a totally different world view from both his peers (the monetary elite) of his time, and of our President. He developped a belief that what is good for the monetary elite is not automatically what is best for everyone. That soem constraints must be placed on the power of those with "capital" in order for those without to be able to reach for the "American Dream".

From this came our child labor and anti-sweatshop laws. The "great trust buster" was born of this. The "Speak softly but carry a big stick" doctrin of diplomacy was born. Much of what led to what America became in the twentieth century arose directly from T.R. and the lessons he learned in overcoming his own infirmity.

So much of their lives run parrallel that I am left to wonder, if you take away T.R.'s struggles, is George W. Bush what you are left with?