I listen to a lot of podcasts. When I'm out in the yard, I'm listening to podcasts. As I go to sleep, I'm listening to podcasts. I draw so much information from podcasts, they've replaced cable news. I listen to my fair share of right wing, nutjob podcasts because, well, I'm me. But I also listen to contrarian podcasts. Let me rephrase that; I listen to podcasts from people with views I consider contrarian.
There are two ideas I've taken from recent podcasts, on which I keep chewing. First, Dennis Prager's idea that, over time, the American people have begun to value comfort over freedom. Second, I heard John Podhoretz, during a recent "Commentary" podcast, repeat something he heard, and for which he could not cite and for that was dismayed, "The older a cohort gets, the more risk averse it becomes." During that podcast, someone noted the recent commencement address by the President of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels. The Purdue webpage titles this, "Biggest risk of all is that we stop taking risks at all."
Recently, I was discussing these ideas with my massage therapist, because, hey, doesn't everyone do that? The outcome of the conversation made me fear we have come too far to reverse course without something of an existential nature happening. Let's take a step back. My children are old enough to recall 9/11/2001. This year will be the 20th year since the collapse of the towers and the fight against global terrorism. Those images are in our collective brains. There was carnage, raw emotion in response, and a resolve to avenge the deaths. But, and I don't mean this lightly, 9/11 was not the level of event that World War II was, both in it's scope and effect on the American psyche.'ll
I'll examine this tomorrow and through the Memorial Day weekend.
-dcw-