Thursday, August 30, 2007

Sorry, all out of Grit

A discussion on grit and whether or not we still have it as compared to our fore bearers who fought in, say WW2, has broken out among the guest bloggers on Andrew Sullivan's blog while he's away. I'm quite honestly shocked that the participants have not roundly decided we lack it.

I know it's always difficult to judge one generation against another, but consider this. At the time of the American Revolution our ancestors were willing to fight and die for being taxed without representation. Today the most outrageous earmarks hardly register a shrug. They were willing to fight and die for habeus corpus and to take a stand against the torture of prisoners of war. Today, even the Democrats are afraid to bring a bill to restore habeus corpus to a vote. We're so scared by a single terrorist attack on our soil in the last ten years that we're willing to give away freedoms our fore bearers willingly shed blood for.

I agree with the guest bloggers that if victory in Iraq was a foreseeable end with 150,000 or so troops in Iraq, we would pursue it. If that's your grit-standard we pass. But if fundamental Islam is such a threat to our world, then true grit would mandate doing what it takes to right Iraq, which would mean sending 400,000-500,000 troops over. We blanch at the mere suggestion of that. An alternative, if we believe Iraq like Vietnam is truly lost, would be to get out NOW, but no one seems to have the grit to make that call.

But honestly, I think we show the true measure of our grit in every aspect of our lives. We have become soft, there is no question. If our children struggle in school, it is the teachers fault, not ours or the children's. If we get a parking or speeding ticket, we harass the officer doing his job before taking responsibility. We totally lack the will to confront the desolation of New Orleans. We, as a country, are doing absolutely nothing to confront what our descendants will surely see as the great challenge of our own time: global warming/the end of oil. I'm sorry, but grit isn't living in denial or putting faith in technology advances (which we aren't investing in) as you buy a smaller SUV because you can't afford gas anymore, it's being willing to look at a problem, acknowledge it as a problem and do what you must to fix it. And whether its the outrageously low teacher pay or swearing off credit card debt (or budget deficits), our society totally and completely lacks the grit and determination to do what's best.