The Man From the Twentieth Century

Tell us about when you were young, Grandpa.

They gathered around as he rocked back and forth in his rocking chair and gazed at the ceiling.

When I was young, he began, we believed that we could change the world. Because the world had changed so much since our grandparents were born.

When I was young, he continued, we worked hard because hard work got things done. Hard work sent men to the moon. Hard work invented computers. Hard work built tall buildings and paved wide highways and sent cars and trucks racing from coast to coast.

When I was young, we convinced ourselves that we should protect the environment, and we passed laws to do it. We believed that we could reduce poverty, and we invented programs to help people who needed help. We believed the Holocaust was an anomaly.

And when I was young, we believed that principles made us different -- that our country was founded on them and our laws derived from them. We only had to read the Constitution to see them.

But that was the Twentieth Century, and this is now. All the environmental laws are gone. Social security and medicare and medicaid are no more. Today genocides are just the cost of politics. And our Constitution has been amended so many times that you can't see the principles anymore. Today hard work doesn't count, only money does.

And today, people no longer believe they can change the world.

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