Today's column is seemingly ok. Friedman tells us that his months of travel have led him to believe:
...if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building....They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore....millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others.
There are two problems with his article, however.
The first is that all this nation-building angst arises, in part, because we can't bomb Iran, the full quote is:
They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.
The second is that there is the usual values pablum:
We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”
Nothing in America today prevents the vast majority from working hard, studying, saving, investing and living within one's means. How cultivating these values will fix education, infrastructure, energy availability, or our inability to bomb Iran is unclear. How these values feed into a thirst for nation-building is not explained. And just where does one enlist for these values?
Friedman's stuff is substance-free, no different from this kind below, except with better packaging:
Nobody says you must laugh, but a sense of humor can help you overlook the unattractive, tolerate the unpleasant, cope with the unexpected, and smile through the day
Self-confidence gives you the freedom to make mistakes and cope with failure without feeling that your world has come to an end or that you are a worthless person.
Life is not what it's supposed to be. It’s what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.
We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they attempt
Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough
Leadership is not magnetic personality/that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people /that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
The more chance there is of stubbing your toe, the more chance you have of stepping into success.
