A vision for America

I have no children or grandchildren, and of course I will never have any great-grandchildren, as I have far fewer years yet to live than I have already lived, yet I feel intensely an obligation to our young people, our posterity, to pass on to them the blessings of liberty, a charitable general welfare and a secure domestic tranquility. I believe that is why this nation was founded, just as the preamble to our Constitution states.

We have a moral duty to nurture our children; provide for their healthcare, their education and their ethical training; and help them find vision. There is a lack of vision among our politicians who cannot even see the immense value of providing healthcare to all our children. “Where there is no vision, the people shall perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

There is an unsettling dread in most of America that, for the first time in our history, our grandchildren will not inherit the fullness of these blessings which our generation has enjoyed. We have had better jobs, better healthcare and better education than our parents and grandparents.

We grew up in a time when our parents preserved the domestic tranquility and a government of the people, by the people and for the people. They kept this heritage alive for us and expanded our civil rights, despite world wars and the dark nuclear threat. But today I am troubled that we are not passing on to our posterity the blessings and hopes given us.

Bill Clinton stated it well: “Anyone who has ever watched a child’s eyes wander into sleep knows what posterity is. Posterity is the world to come; the world for whom we hold our ideals, from whom we have borrowed our planet and to whom we bear sacred responsibility. We must do what America has done best: offer more opportunity to all and demand responsibility from all.”

Joe Howard Crews