Perhaps that is the way it should be with great nations, they can only be great as long as the people feel the challenge to be great. Then they must join the rest of the nations in the world who are just trying to get from paycheck to paycheck and not lose their minds with their teenagers. Average nations do not reach for the stars.
As we start 2014 it reminds me of when Japan was rising and China was drifting down into a lesser nation. It took a long time for China to repose into a third world but now they may be on the rise again.
In the year 607 A.D. a Japanese leader, Prince Shotoku, sent a delegation to China lead by diplomat Ono no Imoko. He had the dubious honor of carrying this message: Greetings From the Leader of the Land of the Rising Sun To the Leader of the Land of the Setting Sun.
That made China mad. How mad? The aforementioned Japanese diplomat returned home to Japan all cut up in a box. In fact, the insulting message resonated several times in history when China wanted to stomp Japan. Twice they were caught crossing the sea in a typhoon which is not the textbook way of invading.
And then Japan, full of themselves leading up to WWII devastated China killing thirty million Chinese. Now it would seem China is the Land of the Rising Sun and Japan, who do not understand free markets, is the Land of the Setting Sun. China going up, Japan going down.
There is Greece, Spain, France, and other European nations plummeting into the financial abyss of spending more than they have for generations. That brings us to America. Should we also be known as the Land of the Setting Sun?
Tony Blair said the measure of a nation is how many people want in and how many want out. Some Americans are leaving our nation to escape our confiscatory tax policy. Their problem to find a government not fouling its own nest.
Here in America our space program has mostly been dismantled. The space station was put up as a fueling area for craft reaching to the moon and planets. But America now hitches rides to the Space Station on Russian craft. Russian President Vladimir Putin this week said he is going to revitalize the Russian Space Program.
What is the American plan? No plan. We are waiting on the 2014 elections to make any meaningful change in our society but then it will be into the 2016 presidential elections and so we cannot make any kind of real change and then in 2017… sorry, the 2018 elections are coming and we cannot make changes. And so on.
I have to admit the fall of our great nation was on my watch and I feel it every day because the America I inherited as a young man was so very different from the America now. That was a “Can do” America that could go to the moon and return safely. Today we have trouble going to the store and returning safely.
We cannot be a great nation while asking for government handouts. The people cannot lead America to greatness when they are sitting on their butts with their free phones and subsidies. America cannot be great in the unemployment line.
Government makes wealth in a small fraction of our population while destroying the greatness in our citizens. It is 2014 and the clock is ticking. Citizens make the sun rise while government makes the sun set.
Dr. Michael Swickard hosts the syndicated radio talk show News New Mexico six to nine a.m. Monday - Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: michael@swickard.com
