IN THE SPIRIT OF NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION: NATIONAL SERVICE

My friend and neighbor Denis forwarded over the link to a YouTube video entitled “WW II North Platte Canteen.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07DGeLvDw8I

Denis posed the rhetorical question: A long time ago and far, far away America was somehow different. What happened? Can we bring back this type of story again? I took it upon myself to reply as follows:

Yes, we can bring this type of America back. How? As a start, we should:

Remind Americans that we all have an ownership stake in the two-front war that has been waged longer than any earlier war in US history; Afghanistan and Bush’s fiasco, Iraq.

Remind Americans that we are a nation of people who are more than the sum total of their physical possessions.

Remind Americans that we are a nation of people -who despite the urge to ‘strike it big and easy’ with a Mega-lottery win- are still fundamentally a nation that wants to get ahead and achieve through the expenditure of our sweat, our labor and our tears; not the easy way out and upward.

Remind Americans that individually we are responsible for the consequences of our individual actions, be you a singular human or the corporate fiction of a human.

Remind Americans that you don’t bring General Motors, Chrysler, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, WAMU and other entities to their knees while cashing out pay-offs couched in legalese as ‘performance bonuses’ while simultaneously escaping blame or taking responsibility for your leadership failures.

Remind Americans that but for the human involvement in the decision making processes of the above corporate entities and others, they’d be much stronger corporations that would not need taxpayer hand outs to remain solvent.

Remind Americans that while Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa wasn’t politically correct a few weeks ago when he suggested Hari Kari for some of these corporate malfeasants, the willingness of their principals to submit letter of resignations would have been a gesture of humanity and humility.

Spontaneous resignations would have been and would still be gestures of good will and humility towards those of their co-citizens who these big-wigs would pass on the street in their limos without a second thought - now that the big-wigs are beseeching these same ‘have nots’ for a second chance to save their companies using the assets of those citizens the big-wigs wouldn’t have deigned earlier to even acknowledge as Constitutional and human equals.

Rick Wagonner’s late March 2009 resignation as Chairman and CEO of GM was welcomed, but why isn’t the White House also calling for the resignations of all those CEOs who received TARP funds to keep their floundering firms afloat? Why isn't anybody calling for the resignations of those in Congress whose Chairmanships and memberships placed them on committees and sub-committees charged with regulating the regulators?

Remind Americans that we aren’t as portrayed by the media, that the bloated Russ Limbaugh is the head of nothing but a cabal of talking heads spewing hot air, and that Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter conduct themselves like manic valkeries who like Goebbels probably believe if you repeat something often enough even if untrue, people will come to believe the ‘big lie.’

Remind Americans that despite a media that is hell bent on publicizing gore, guts, and glamour, that Americans are more than a nation of crass consumers focused on the antics of actor and musician boys who beat up girls, athletes who inject banned performance enhancing drugs, and rock stars whose idea of a big rock isn’t Alcatraz but cocaine - that the fundamentals of America remain fundamentally strong.

Who is America in 2009?

Amongst others:

* It’s the Eagle Scout who builds a ramp for handicapped seniors to use to access a senior program.

* It’s the Girl Scouts who package cookies and have them shipped overseas with the help of countless others in the donated facilities of a veteran’s organization.

* It’s the geriatric members of the ELKS, the VFW, the American Legion, and others who make sure that our flag is respected and treated appropriately, and it’s the same Elk, Moose, VFW or Legion members who heads off on their own time and own dime to the VA hospital to visit recuperating vets. It’s these selfless golden oldies, that despite the paucity of newsprint or air time devoted to it, prove that Americans don’t forget our veterans.

* It’s the old goateed silver haired men 40 and above who polish their Harleys and Honda’s to escort the coffins home of soldiers, sailors, Airmen and Marines who answered their nations’ call but came home only as KIAs.

* It’s the same “motorcycle dudes” who without being asked -even in the days of $4 a gallon gas- would fuel up and escort the coffins of murdered police officers and firefighters who died without a 2nd thought protecting their fellow Americans.

* It’s the volunteer who joins their local Fire Department or Ambulance corps. It’s the long time volunteer in either department who yields to the passage of years and transitions from active duty to either the Fire Police squad or the Exempts but stays involved nonetheless.

* It’s the newly minted attorney who foregoes a white shoe law firm for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Legal Aid, or service as an Assistant District Attorney.

* It’s the doctor, dentist or chiropractor who doesn’t automatically search for the affluent as patients, but who spends some time with Doctors without Borders, staffing an inner-city clinic or provides other pro bono services to their fellow citizens.

* It's your neighbor who works all day, then runs home in order to run out again to serve as a non-paid member of the local School board, taking guff from both the tax paying parents as well as the tax payer paid educators.

* It’s the farmer who toils from sunrise to sunset to make sure so far as he or she can, that no American goes hungry.

* It's the member of the clergy, of whatever religion or denomination, who still believes and brings that message of good news to others while not hiding criminal activities which may have occured on their watch from the authorities.

* It’s the person who brings used clothing to the homeless, stirs soup in a soup kitchen, or brings cans of non-perishable food to a food pantry.

* It’s the normally Laura Ashley wearing ladies of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs who doff their Bierkenstocks and head down to Nicaragua for a few weeks to help the citizens of the parish’s sister community.

* It's the young person who foregoes a horse back riding lesson so that a physically challenged youth can ride that day instead.

* It's the welfare recipient who realizes that the program is for transitional purposes, not as an optional life-style choice that transcends generations. It's the citizen who realizes that truly, "there is no free lunch."

* It’s the American who with calloused outstretched hands stands ready to offer a hand up rather than just a hand out.

Remember how we all came together in the days and weeks after 9.11? I can remember being on the Throgs Neck headed to a meeting in Connecticut, noticing how weird it was that plumes of smoke were coming from Manhattan, and that nobody else was headed south on the bridge while I drove north. As I got closer to Connecticut, the only things moving south were convoys of fire apparatus, Connecticut troopers, ambulances, and olive drab trucks. Sirens were wailing, but there was still an eerie silence.

The unity of the nation in the days after 9.11 was shattered when we all realized that we had been collectively lied to. Lied to by an inept, incompetent, lying bunch of political hacks on the shores of the Potomac, hell bent on a pre-emptive war in a nation where those who attacked us did not reside nor conceal weapons of mass destruction, and where ultimately another demonstrable form of mass destruction was to what credibility Americans accord to that which our government tell us.

With a sense of déjà vu, this was very much the contemporary version of the way an earlier generations of inept, incompetent, lying political hacks on the shores of the Potomac lied to the American people –and our troops- about Agent Orange, Vietnamization, and the ability of the South Vietnamese to wage their own war against Ho and the North once the U.S. had departed that theatre; a theatre of the absurd.

The democratic administration of LBJ, and the republican administrations of Richard Nixon and of George Bush IInd, did substantial damage to the collective morale of the American nation.

The inept, incompetent, lying political hacks of the 2nd Bush administration and the “do nothing” Congresses of those years did untold damage to the American financial regulatory system. They did so by blindly following the Reaganesque 'laissez faire' doctrines.

The executive branch regulators did so by looking away from their charges and ignoring their responsibilities, while Members of Congress charged with oversight of these executive branch regulators often pocketed campaign contributions from personnel affiliated with the entities the agencies over whom they had oversight were charged with regulating.

In sum, it doesn't take a scandal of the scope of Bernie Madoff or the walking wounded of Wall Street to realize that they raked in the loot while the 'trickle down' economic theories of those decades really morphed into the 'tinkle on' results now being confronted by the current President and his administration.

With no mandatory national service required with the abolition of the draft, people feel disconnected from events that occur around them. I’m not advocating gasoline rationing, recycling tires, aluminium and other metals for ‘the war effort,’ but if people felt the wars, they’d feel more of an identification with those who wear the uniform and with the national mission. They might feel more like 'Americans,' than hyphenated-Americans.

I’d argue that you can’t make somebody feel that we are at war and need to tend to the needs of our service personnel and each other as part of a united nation if they can spontaneously jump in their cars, drive to Sears, buy four new tires, and a new refrigerator. Then while driving home, stop at Waldbaum’s to buy unlimited coffee, fruits and vegetables, meats and dairy products before they go online to book their family vacation to Florida.

In much the same way that you can’t tax yourself to prosperity without killing the goose that laid the golden egg, we probably won’t get back to a spirit of shared national sacrifice until we are called upon to do just that; sacrifice.

When we combine some form of national service with reawakened personal responsibility and a reference to each religions version of the Golden Rule in combination with Matthew 25: “That which you do unto the least of my brothers and sisters you do unto me,” we’ll at least be closer to being back on the right path once again.