Crying For the Future

Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal Contitution has a good take on where we are today as a country.
The telling part comes at the end of the article.

But more compelling to me than numbers are the e-mails, probably dozens of them in total, that have trickled into my in-box over the past year or so from older Americans all around the country.

“I am 79 . . . I am 84 . . . I was born in 1931,” they start out. “I fought with the Eighth Army in Korea . . . We lost our oldest son in Vietnam . . . My husband served in the Pacific . . . I taught school for 35 years,” they continue, each recounting their personal contributions to this country and establishing their own perspective on its history.

Then comes the statement that breaks your heart. The words vary from author to author, but the sentiment does not:

“This is not the country I wanted to leave my grandchildren . . . Is this what we sacrificed so much for all those years? . . . I really don’t understand how it has come to this. . . . We took for granted that in America it would always be better for the next generation, but I can’t see that’s the case anymore. . . . Where did we go wrong?”

These people are concerned not for themselves, but for what they may soon leave behind. And that concern for the future is all the more remarkable because it is so rare among those of us who are their children and grandchildren.

See what happens when I spend all day in the hotel room with free broadband. I get a chance to catch up with everything and everyone. Quite the luxury.