Where is our character?

Reader Bartman (Go Cubs?), with this speech given to his alma mater, Northwood University.

By almost any measure, the standards we as citizens practice ourselves and expect of those we parent, influence and elect have slipped badly in recent years. Simple courtesies are increasingly rare. Our celebrity-drenched culture focuses incessantly on the vapid and the irresponsible. What once was shunned as bad behavior is all too often flaunted today as a sign we're "doing our own thing." Our role models would make our grandparents cringe. To many, insisting on sterling character seems too straight-laced and old-fashioned. We cut corners and sacrifice character all the time for power, money, attention or other ephemeral gratifications. The terrible price we're paying for this disturbing erosion of character is reckoned in terms of theft and violence, family break-ups, scandals in business, unions and government, and numerous other ills.

You see this erosion of character when you turn on the evening news any night of the week: Political campaigns resorting to last-minute smears to win elections. Businessmen groveling before politicians, begging for a handout, refusing to speak truth to power by explaining the government's complicity in their troubles, in fear the money won't be approved. You even see it in the coarse and vulgar language people plaster on their car bumpers, or the obligations and responsibilities that so many freely walk away from when it becomes inconvenient to keep their word.

Character is ultimately more important than all the college degrees, public offices or even all the knowledge that one might accumulate in a lifetime. It puts a concrete floor under one's future or an iron ceiling over it. Who in their right mind would want to live in a world without it?

Liberty and free enterprise, which Americans ritually claim they cherish, depend entirely upon character. They cannot possibly survive without it. A people who will not govern and restrain themselves will sooner or later be governed and restrained by others.

Many traits define strong character. Among them are honesty, humility, responsibility, courage, self-discipline, self-reliance, optimism, a long-term focus and a lust for learning. A society that forsakes those virtues is bound for chaos, serfdom and extinction.

There are three items I keep a copy of in my glove box

1) a copy of the US Constitution
2) Ronald Reagan's 1964 convention speech
3) A Speech by P.J. O'Rourke to the Heritage Foundation

and now this one.

Read the whole thing here. More importantly, make your kid(s) read it as well.