| 来源类型 | Article
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| 规范类型 | 评论
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| What Makes a Generation Great? |
| Herbert Stein
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| 发表日期 | 1999-04-29
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| 出版年 | 1999
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| 语种 | 英语
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| 摘要 | The generation of Americans who fought World War II is sometimes called the greatest generation. I am a member of that generation. But I endured no great hardship and performed no acts of heroism. I was a desk officer in the Navy in Washington during the war. So it is without conceit that I salute that generation.
But it is also without belittling their achievements that I point to some other great generations. In fact, the history of America is a history of great generations.
There were the colonists who crossed the Atlantic in tiny boats and endured great rigors ashore to open this continent. There was the generation that wrote the Declaration of Independence, defeated the British and framed the Constitution. There were the pioneers and settlers who explored, occupied and developed the vast territory west of the Mississippi. There were those who gave the last full measure of devotion during the Civil War. There were and are the generations of blacks who began and are continuing the climb up from slavery. There were those who bore the costs in lives and fortune of the Cold War that erupted into hot wars in Korea and Vietnam.
I think particularly of the generation of Jews, Italians, Slavs and others who came to America from Eastern and Southern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That was my father’s generation. They came to a country about which they knew little. They did not speak English. The local customs and the predominant religion were strange to them. Mostly they were poor and without skills of much use in America.
Once here they worked hard. They became thoroughgoing Americans while retaining much of their own identity. They were dedicated to the education of their children. They contributed enormously to the economic and cultural wealth of this country.
My father came here from Russia when he was nine years old. As a teenager he enlisted in the U.S. cavalry and went to the Philippines to chase guerrilla rebels. He worked as a blue-collar machinist in manufacturing plants for much of his life. And when I was 10 he already had the specific but fanciful idea that I would, in time, work my way through college by playing the saxophone in a dance band on an excursion boat in the Detroit river.
In what will the greatness of the present and future generations consist? Past generations have most obviously been reckoned great because of participation in war. I do not see the conditions that would lead to a great war. But even a small war, such as the one in which we are now involved in Kosovo, may open up a possibility for greatness if, by its successful conclusion, it can convince future dictators that they cannot brutalize their citizens without paying a heavy price.
Can a generation avoid war yet achieve greatness through exhibitions of generosity, foresight and creativity? I think so. The generation that produced the Marshall Plan and NATO, gave aid to poor countries and put a man on the moon would have been great, even if they had not had to fight wars in Korea and Vietnam.
I spend a lot of time with economists who focus on the challenge my grandchildren face to pay the Social Security and Medicare benefits my generation promised our children. That is indeed a challenge, but it seems to lack the stuff of greatness. However, a generation would be great if it could find a humane and efficient way to provide increasingly costly but increasingly productive medical care for a society that rejects the idea of rationing care — and life — by price and income.
Similarly, a generation that could find ways to give the people of the underdeveloped world a substantial boost toward personal security and economic development would also be great. And how great would be the generation that could make the decisive step to create a society in which people of different races and ethnic groups are not only tolerated but appreciated for the contributions their differences make to our lives?
As we excitedly enter upon the Information Age we would do well to recall T.S. Eliot’s lament:
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
To reverse this process, and make our new torrents of information a source of knowledge and wisdom, would qualify a generation for greatness.
The challenges that evoked greatness in the past were rarely foreseen. The men who landed on Omaha Beach never dreamed that they had been born to do that. We cannot tell just what challenges will occasion greatness in the generations of 2020 and 2050. Yet there does seem to be a capacity for greatness in America. It lies dormant at times, and this may be one of those times. But it will spring to life when the need or opportunity arises.
Mr. Stein , a former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, is author of What I Think (American Enterprise Institute Press, 1998). |
| 主题 | Society and Culture
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| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/what-makes-a-generation-great/
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| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States)
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| 资源类型 | 智库出版物
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| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/236519
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推荐引用方式
GB/T 7714 |
Herbert Stein. What Makes a Generation Great?. 1999.
|
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