What WERE They Thinking?

What kind of legacy are we - the current citizens of the United states - leaving for future generations? How will we be viewed by those citizens fifty or one hundred years or more down the road? I cannot help but think that they will look upon what we have done to the country and ask, "What WERE they thinking?"

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When we think of America in the late-18th and early-19th century, we think of the "founding fathers". Their legacy is plainly obvious to everyone. Our nation was in its formative stages and the decisions and policies instituted by the founding fathers served as a foundation upon which was built the greatest nation on Earth if not in the history of the world. The generations of the mid-to-late 1800s were thought of as pioneers as the United States expanded westward and the Industrial Revolution began to crank up. We then came to the 20th century. Americans of the early-to-mid 1900s are often referred to as members of the "Greatest Generation". This is the America that invented the airplane, broke technological barriers, and, above all, defeated German and Japanese tyranny in World War II. The resolve and innovation displayed by America during that war served to inspire future generations. The nation came together and “got it done” in a manner that had not been done before nor has it been seen since. By the late-1900s, America’s technological advances were beginning to hit full stride. Economic prosperity was a hallmark of the late-1950s and through most of the 1960s. Even given the civil unrest and turmoil of the period, that generation’s legacy will include man’s greatest adventure – launching man into outer space and landing human beings on the Moon. But what do we have to show for our handling of the country today? What will be our lasting legacy? Will future generations look back upon America in the late-20th and early-21st centuries and ask themselves, “What WERE they thinking?” My bet is that they will. I believe that Americans in the late-21st century will look upon us with disdain, if not outright contempt. “How could they have done this to us?” they will ask themselves. It is unconscionable for us to have spent trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have, mortgaging the future of the nation to foreign countries such as China, and to have little, if nothing, to show for it. Unless, of course, one considers it an accomplishment to have vast numbers of citizens reliant upon the “nanny state”. With millions of citizens (and non-citizens) dependent upon government for their subsistence and $14.3 trillion dollars worth of debt, that is quite the legacy. What WERE we thinking?