The Sun has set on American Idealism

There is a uniquely exhilarating feeling to waking up on a bright summer morning during those serene days of childhood. Few things match that keenly exuberant feeling that ANYTHING is possible as gentle, warm light streams through the windows while dew dries on the lawn and birds fill the morning air with heart-lifting song. You may not have a plan for the day, but there could be any number of options available to you and your friends. All it took was jumping on your bike or walking to a neighbor’s house and away you’d go. That sense of boundless opportunity and limitless hope is a hallmark of youthful optimism. At least, that WAS how things once were in this country before the world around was deemed to be too threatening and dangerous and children were guarded within the confines of the home like fragile Limoges China. Once upon a time, hope filled the hearts of our nation’s young people and even its adults were cautiously enthusiastic about the future, but somewhere over the past forty to fifty odd years those feelings have changed and we have devolved into a nation of worriers, fretters, cringing cynics and people without any sense of what makes life worth living, especially when it comes to children. And it all began with how we transmitted an absolutely priceless national commodity, our sense of idealism.

Each and every generation is forced to come face to face with a national tragedy which tests that inherent hope of a democratic nation dedicated to Laws and Principles. Almost every decade of American History has seen greater or lesser evils that darken the bright horizon for a time. That process of a society being tried is part of what forges the inner resilience of a people and leaves them stronger for passing through the crucible and the fire. All tests leave their marks, a combination of wisdom and caution blended with a deeper sense of appreciation leavened with renewed feeling of purpose. But it is never easy, for the trials a generation face often require sacrifice and the endurance of deep hardship, which can often erode the native positivism of any culture. But it is HOW the lessons of those trials are passed along that matters and it is that shared inheritance of memory and learning that renews hope in the hearts of each and every generation. That is until recently when an insidious change came over our methods of transmitting memory.
In the time of my great-grandparents’ and my grandparents’, the disaster that was the Great War which laid low the Old Order of Europe coupled with the terrors of the Influenza Epidemic that swept like a scythe though the world, that was their Trial by Fire. Death and misery must have seemed like they would be their lot forever until both Specters receded from daily life, leaving the survivors blinking in shock like people awakened from a bad dream.