In his first inaugural address, President Barack Obama urged “a new era of responsibility—a recognition of the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly.” He described those duties as “values upon which our success depends—honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism—these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.”
Despite his exhortation, our citizenry and its leaders have turned their backs on those principles fundamental to our republic. Fair play is replaced by fake news; tolerance by hatred; hard work by hardened rhetoric; loyalty and patriotism by treachery and self-aggrandizement. It is easy to place the blame on social media, extremists or the pandemic but, in truth, the root cause of our discord began a generation before Obama urged us to return to the first principles on which our government was founded. In large measure, we are losing our way because we have ceased to imbue our youth with an understanding and love of civics.
