America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great

by Ben Carson, M. D.

  However, sixteen years after the Vietnam War ended, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the enthusiasm for military intervention was tremendous. After the successful conclusion of the effort to restore freedom to Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush and the military heroes enjoyed enormous popularity and approval. A war with well-defined and widely accepted goals that ends in victory will virtually always be seen as virtuous. The subsequent war with Iraq3 years later was much more controversial, especially after weapons of mass destruction were not found. Although a qualified victory was eventually scored, the opposition to it certainly rivaled that present during the Vietnam War. Whether the war in Iraq was moral or not is highly debatable. If you think stopping a brutal dictator from continuing to kill hundreds of thousands of his own people is worthwhile, then you are more likely to believe that we acted in a morally justifiable manner. If you are more concerned about the over 4,000 American lives that were lost and the hundreds of billions of dollars that were added to our national debt to be passed along to our children, then you’re more likely to feel that our efforts were immoral.

  The point here is that it is very difficult to determine our nation’s morality based on its military conflicts. Also, because we have dramatic changes of leadership and political philosophy, we do not have a consistent policy that governs military intervention. Then too one can legitimately ask the question, is any war moral? We try to sanitize wars by establishing all kinds of rules of conduct. Certainly women and children should be spared and torture should not be used, along with a myriad of other guidelines. If we followed this line of reasoning regarding prohibitions in war to its logical conclusion, I think the ultimate rule would say no war, period! If you can establish arbitrary rules for war, then making one more rule that eliminates all war makes a lot of sense. Of course, by definition, wars tend to start when logical, reasoned diplomacy fails.

  FAMILY VALUES AND EDUCATION

  It is hard to talk about the morality of a nation without considering the question of family values and the education of our youth. As we discussed in chapter 4, our founding fathers placed great importance on educating future generations. “I think with you,” Benjamin Franklin once said, “that nothing is of more importance for the public weal [or welfare], than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms. I think also, that general virtue is more probably to be expected and obtained from the education of youth, than from the exhortations of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured. I think, moreover, that the talents for the education of youth are the gift of God; and that he on whom they are bestowed, whenever a way is opened for the use of them, is as strongly called as if he heard a voice from heaven….”4

  I believe one of the reasons our nation prospered was a strong emphasis on traditional family values that included instruction on the difference between right and wrong, teaching that began in the home and continued at school. And one of the central sources for defining values was the Bible, which back then was found in all public schools. Basic religious principles were taught in public schools in such a way as to have the broadest possible application without favoring any particular denomination. Children were taught that there was a Creator to whom they were responsible and that there was a moral code given to us by the Creator to whom we would all have to answer in the afterlife. The founding fathers had much to say regarding the morality of our nation and how important it was to our future, but I think one of the best quotes that summarizes their feelings is from John Adams when he said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”5

  I fully recognize that many in our society would prefer not to derive their morality from the Bible and its teachings. Many such people are atheists or agnostics and claim to have their own internal moral compass. While their opinions diverge when it comes to sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, gambling, the use of illicit drugs and alcohol, and other social behavior, I find it interesting to note, however, that their moral compass points in very much the same direction as Judeo-Christian values when it comes to such issues as murder, lying, cheating, and theft.

  There is no question that the perspective over the last few decades regarding social morality has changed dramatically. When I was a child, it was generally considered shameful to have a child out of wedlock, whereas today, in many segments of our society, having a child out of wedlock is the norm, not in any way assigned social stigma. Many people feel this indicates that we are progressing to a more enlightened stage and that we are less judgmental and more accepting of everyone. Although being open-minded and accepting is generally a good thing, we should examine the effect this change in attitude has on society as a whole.

  Children born out of wedlock are at least twice as likely to live in poverty as those born to a traditional family consisting of a married father and mother with a stable household income.6 Unwed mothers are also more likely to be high school or college dropouts and are more likely to be recipients of public welfare — frequently on a chronic basis. There is a greater incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in both unwed mothers and unwed fathers. Not only are these things deleterious to the affected children and parents, but they also place extra burdens on the rest of society, who has to pay the bills. And because someone else pays the bill, the behavior continues, and we feed an entitlement society with a voracious appetite for government funding.

  This brings us back to our point that what appears to be good in the short run, but is harmful in the long run, is in the end not virtuous and does not contribute to societal morality. A truly moral nation enacts policies that encourage personal responsibility and discourage self-destructive behavior by not subsidizing people who live irresponsibly and make poor choices. This can be done in a compassionate way by phasing out government assistance for those already receiving it and by making it clear that there will be no government assistance in the future in these situations. This is not to say that the affected individuals cannot be aided by their families, churches, and other charitable organizations and individuals. What we have just discussed may seem a bit harsh to many bleeding heart do-gooders, but I submit that what is harsh is continuing to encourage irresponsible behavior and generating a permanent underclass. We also simply cannot afford welfare programs for able-bodied people who make unwise choices and expect other people to pay for it.

  An example of how responsible government policies can change a society’s behavior is found in Sweden, where they decided in the 1990s that their nation’s incidence of drunk driving was too high.7 They changed the legally tolerated blood-alcohol limit from 0.05 to 0.02 (in the United States, the average tolerated blood-alcohol level is 0.08 — four times higher than that in Sweden) and enacted and enforced severe penalties for drunk driving, including mandatory jail time, astronomical fines, and confiscation of one’s vehicle. As a result, there was a dramatic decline in alcohol-related traffic accidents and fatalities. The behavioral changes are so enculturated that hardly anyone even considers driving if they have consumed a single can of beer. This shows that people do respond to appropriate legislative changes and that there is still great potential for our nation to use government in a responsible and uplifting manner that will not break the bank and that will encourage the development of responsible citizens who will be contributors rather than dependents.

  FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: A HALLMARK

  OF A MORAL GOVERNMENT

  In 2008, we saw the beginning of a gigantic financial crisis on Wall Street, with financial experts convincing both Republicans and Democrats that a financial tsunami would destroy the United States and the rest of the world if a gigantic government bailout did not occur immediately. So our government embarked upon a series of financial ventures to prop up companies and financial entities that were “too big to fail.”
/>   Whether it really worked or not is anybody’s guess and can never be proven one way or another, but one thing that did become clear was that there were many people involved in the financial markets who made enormous sums of money by engaging in questionable financial practices, while shareholders and constituents made little or nothing — or even lost great sums of money. Some of the tricks employed by money managers had been outlawed through wise legislative reforms enacted after the stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing decade of turmoil. Congress recognized way back then that unless financial markets were regulated, greed would raise its ugly head and wreak havoc whenever human beings are involved.

  During the 1990s, however, Congress allowed significant deregulation of financial markets, perhaps expecting that human nature had changed. It took almost twenty years to prove that greed was still alive and well, and it almost destroyed our nation. The obvious question given our subject matter is, does a moral nation allow criminals who have defrauded the populace to get away without penalty?

  I have no problem with people making large sums of money legitimately along with all the other people involved in whatever venture is generating the money. On the other hand, just because people control our markets’ financial instruments, they should not be able to personally benefit by manipulating those instruments to their advantage. Many of these people suffer from the same type of entitlement mentality seen in poor people who are always looking for a government handout. These Wall Street moguls and corporate executives actually think that what they do is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, even though in many cases they are simply moving money around, producing nothing. The jury is still out on whether our government will conduct a serious investigation into what manipulation, if any, lay behind this crisis and whether justice will be served.

  The Bible says that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10), and with this basic principle in mind one can easily see how a government that is in love with the people’s money could engage in the evil act of “bleeding the people.” A truly virtuous government would act fiscally responsible, constantly remind itself of its duties, and collect just enough money through taxes to take care of those duties. It would never overspend its budget unless there was an emergency, in which case it would make every effort to pay back the debt as soon as possible. The United States government was very fiscally responsible up until World War II, after which time paying back the national debt became less of a priority. That debt has continued to grow and now is almost equal to our gross domestic product (GDP)8 — an entire year’s worth of our nation’s production simply going to pay off debt.

  There are many politicians who say we have always lived with a large national debt9 and that it is really just a number that doesn’t mean anything, but the founders of our nation would be astonished — even outraged — to hear our leaders saying such things. Thomas Jefferson said, “We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.”10

  One of the greatest responsibilities of parents is that of looking out for the future of their children. This is not only a duty, it is a moral obligation. The same is true of a nation and its progeny. To saddle the next generation with unimaginable debt is not only callous, it is morally reprehensible. How can we even live with ourselves knowing that we are eroding the standard of living of the next generations with each dollar that we add to the national debt?

  As of this writing, a vigorous debate has taken place regarding the budget for the remainder of the fiscal year. The Republicans, driven by the new members of the Tea Party, wanted to cut $61 billion from the budget, while the Democrats were willing to cut only about one-sixth of that amount. The president, not wanting to be accused of cutting entitlements, took a “wait and see” attitude rather than leading the charge toward fiscal responsibility. Subsequently, after a huge tug-of-war between the White House, the Republicans, and the Democrats, a new bipartisan super committee has been established to make over a trillion dollars in budgeting cuts and stem the rise of our national debt. Perhaps they will be taken more seriously than was the Bowles/Simpson Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Both Democrats and Republicans have strayed so far from the path of responsible financial policy that the concept of balancing the budget is foreign to them. I believe many of them simply cannot grasp the concept of only spending what you have. I do understand that making budgetary cuts will be painful, but it will not be nearly as painful as going bankrupt! One need only look at historic images of Hungarian pengo bills being swept in the gutter in 1946 or of the Zimbabwe one hundred trillion dollar bill created recently because of their rocketing hyperinflation11 to understand the gravity of this situation.

  Knowing how Washington works, I can already predict that our Democratic president and the rest of the Democratic Party will claim that the Republicans want to cut programs that benefit children, the elderly, and the infirm and that they want to stifle medical research and programs that will create economic growth. The Republicans will claim that the Democrats are addicted to spending and couldn’t stop if their lives depended on it. Applying logic to the situation, which may be too much to hope for given all the emotions flying around Washington, could go a long way toward resolving the problem without making it into a political football.

  I believe the logical approach would be to have each governmental agency and department trim its budget by 10 percent — with no exceptions. In each subsequent year, another 10 percent decrease would be required and would continue as long as necessary to bring the budget back into balance. This would mean there would be no sacred cows and no sparing of entitlements. No politician, agency, or special interest group could cry foul. Government agencies would either have to become much more efficient, cut benefits, or both, and those in charge of each governmental department should have the best idea of where the excess fat is and how to cut it in the least painful manner. Since the axe would fall equally on everyone, no one could claim that they were being unfairly targeted, and we could eliminate the political overtones and get down to business.

  It is often easier to understand the insight logic brings to a situation by choosing a smaller and simpler problem to solve. If a family of seven — consisting of a father, mother, and five children — experienced a substantial financial setback, many lifestyle changes would have to take place. One of the changes might be the weekly allowance. I think all of the children would understand if their parents announced that due to budgetary constraints, instead of getting ten dollars a week, they would only receive nine dollars a week — and that if things did not change, further reductions of allowance might occur in the future. Although none of the children would be happy about this change, they would be satisfied that everyone had shared equally in the sacrifice. On the other hand, if the parents decided that two of the children really were too important to have to suffer a reduction in allowance, the other three siblings would protest that they were being treated unfairly, and fights might break out.

  There are a whole host of other issues we could discuss and problems we could solve by applying logic and fairness — and discuss and solve them we must, for our solutions to today’s problems have significant ramifications for tomorrow. Our problems are not ours alone — we share them with future generations — and we have a moral obligation to hand our nation over to our children and grandchildren in good shape.

  If this task sounds impossible, I assure you that we can easily accomplish it if we are willing to embrace our United States Constitution and the principles put forth by the founders, who took their bearings from the Word of God. Short-term politically expedient “fixes” and morality are frequently incompatible, and moral values will only become a part of all our policies when we are willing to rediscover and embrace the principles that established our Constitution.

  Morality,
of course, must be based on something, and we in America have the luxury of freely deciding what that is. Although our founders felt quite comfortable with the Bible as their guidepost, we must now decide what constitutes the foundation of our morality today. Without a moral basis for the way we conduct ourselves, our values will continue to deteriorate, and with them our country’s prosperity. We have made mistakes; however, there is always time to learn from them, change our direction, and move toward a better way.

  — CHAPTER 8 —

  LEARNING FROM

  OUR MISTAKES

  EVERY PERSON MAKES MISTAKES, so it should come as no surprise that every nation of the world has made mistakes as well. Talk with a German national about the hope their country placed in Hitler’s rise to power on the heels of the Great Depression. Or consider our own nation’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and you’ll agree that the question is not whether a nation makes mistakes; the question is whether a nation learns from its mistakes, builds on that knowledge it gains over time, and grows in wisdom. Those nations who learn from their mistakes will become wise, while those who repeat the same mistakes over and over again, expecting a different result, are foolish.

  I certainly experienced my share of mistakes growing up. Because of the racial and socioeconomic injustice I experienced as a boy, in my anger and frustration I began to retaliate by going after people with baseball bats, rocks, and knives. One day a boy pushed me too far. I told him to back off, but he wouldn’t quit pestering me. Finally, I pulled out my knife and lunged at him, striking him in the abdomen. He fell back, and for a moment I thought I had killed him, but just then my knife blade fell to the ground. It had hit his belt buckle and snapped in two.