Taking the Hard Way: A July 4th Reflection
On June 18, 1940, journalist Walter Lippmann spoke at the thirtieth reunion of his own Harvard Class of 1910. Paris had fallen to the Nazis just four days before. Reflecting on the twenty years following the end of World War I, Lippmann chastised Americans and their allies for failing to turn victory into a lasting, magnanimous peace. "[W}e have at the critical junctures taken always the road of the least effort," he said, "and the method of the cheapest solution and of greatest self-indulgence."
On September 12, 1962, President Kennedy spoke at Rice University on the need to successfully meet the challenge of going into space. Referring to the goal of landing men on the moon, he said that: " We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone . . ."
In his State of the Union Address on January 30, 1980, with American hostages still in Iran, the Soviet Union having invaded Afghanistan, and America still overly dependent on foreign oil, Jimmy Carter recalled another part of Lippmann's speech. "Our material resources, great as they are, are limited. Our problems are too complex for simple slogans or for quick solutions. We cannot solve them without effort and sacrifice." "Walter Lippmann once reminded us, Carter said, "You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again. For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every good which you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for nothing any longer."
America is again at a crossroads. Are we willing to take the hard way, or are we in another period of retreat from responsibility and of self-indulgence?
We fight wars we don't pay for and demand tax cuts that future generations must pay. We accrue massive student debt. We treat our climate as if our fragile environment is endlessly renewable. We distance ourselves from international alliances that have brought seven decades of security, assuming we are an island immune from dangerous seas. We renounce international agreements we negotiated as if trust in America is an ephemeral thing only fools count upon. We tear our social fabric in search of political victory, forgetting that the price of winning is the civility upon which trust and free institutions depend. We pursue profit, increasing the gap between the very wealthy and everyone else, as if money is its own end rather than a means to build a stronger, more just society. Perhaps worst of all, we settle for less than facts and truth, as if they are inconvenient intrusions into our illusions.
The easy way is clearer and more appealing. The hard way is difficult to define and demands sacrifice. The easy way appeals to our vanity. The hard way calls upon our character. As Lippmann put it, "[T]he disaster in the midst of which we are living is a disaster in the character of men. It is a catastrophe of the soul of a whole generation which had forgotten, had lost, and had renounced the imperative and indispensable virtues of laborious, heroic, and honorable men."
Despite this, Lippmann expressed hope for the future. "We shall turn from the soft vices in which a civilization decays," he said, "we shall return to the stern virtues by which a civilization is made, we shall do this because, at long last, we know that we must, because finally we begin to see that the hard way is the only enduring way."
He proved prescient. The 1940s saw the leadership of Roosevelt and Truman, victory in World War II, the Marshall Plan, and the creation of NATO. The "greatest generation" rose to the challenge it was given. During the 1950s, Eisenhower continued that challenge with containment, not war, against the Soviet Union. We remember his Farewell Address for his warning about the "military-industrial complex," forgetting his call for the hard way ahead. "As we peer into society's future, " he said, "we--you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow."
On this Independence Day, we should recall our founding generation, who also took the hard way against the world's greatest power. They pledged "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" on their uncertain leap into the future. Taking the easy way is a short-term path that defers but does not avoid the hard way. The longer we delay, the harder that way will get and the steeper the price we will have to pay.
Photo Credit: Jim Strasma
