Unlearning The Lessons Of Childhood

As someone who has several nephews and a niece under the age of 11, I have seen the struggle of parents to teach their children one of the most basic human lessons - sharing. Most children don't gravitate toward sharing straightaway, but eventually the lesson sinks in even if it is only for an hour or two. But why do we even bother to teach our children to share in modern day America? Isn't sharing the exact opposite of what we preach to other adults and for that matter, other nations?

"Greed is good" is a popular quote from the 1987 movie Wall Street, but instead of just a quote it has become a mantra for the powerful and wealthy. It has led us to believe that the accumulation of wealth is the most important thing in our lives and that we shouldn't share that wealth with anyone including our fellow Americans. Talk of government programs, social services, assistance for the poor is scoffed at as un-American, socialist, big government spending nonsense. In fact, those programs are downright evil. Thus we have entered the age of Corporatism and Privatization.

But was America always this way? Was America always a "lookout for number one" kind of society? The answer is no and you need only go back to the first half of the twentieth century for examples when people and government acted for the common good. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal was an effort to bring relief to a country in the ravages of the Great Depression. Numerous government programs were created to bring relief to the poor as well as regulate the machinations of capitalism. FDR also asked Americans to sacrifice for the nation's war effort in World War II and Americans responded in kind.

The thought of such sweeping reform and sacrifice for the common good in today's America sounds ridiculous. Even universal health care is branded as "socialized medicine" with the insinuation that socialism is evil. Yet American society is approaching a tipping point in which the gap between the wealthy and the poor is increasingly vast and may become irreversible. Our society could be permanently fractured if this discrepancy in income levels is allowed to continue unabated. Unfortunately, creating this gap has been the strategy of Republicans since the rise of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and is in full bloom today under the watch of President Bush. And because of the brainwashing that the current generation of Americans has gone through believing that government is bad and socialism is evil, even a Democratic hopeful like Barack Obama may not be able to change how we think as a nation.

The question is will we realize in time that in order to be a great country, we must first be a great society? And in order to be a great society, we will at times have to do things for the common good. That brings us back to the lesson of sharing that we were all taught at one point in our lives. Is it possible for adults to re-learn that lesson or will the errors of free market capitalism and privatization continue to reign? Maybe we should let children show us the way.