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As I was getting Dasher-1 refueled at the WaWa, I happened to think about a brief TV show I saw last night about sports cars. They had Lee Iacocca on and he mentioned how, in the 70’s you couldn’t sell safety. Now it’s all the rage. Then my mind followed that thought and how, at times, it seems that we as a nation have become safety obsessed.
Have we as a nation lost our sense of adventure? It seems sometimes that, whenever someone proposes something bold, the naysayers come out in droves to crush it. “You can do that,” they say. “That’s dangerous,” they warn.
I think you saw some of this in the anti-war pro-Saddam rallies in the build-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. The predictions of the dire results were legion. Yet to date, their predictions have proved to be wildly pessimistic.
Perhaps that one of the reasons they hate Bush so much. Bush has shown himself not to be a shy and shrinking violet. He has, in fact, governed boldly. I think his recent trip to Baghdad illustrates that.
But, isn’t this the way America used to be. Weren’t we born a nation of risk takers? People came here for a better life, but with NO guarantees they would be successful. Certainly not all were. But some, through brutally hard work, prevailed and did so uproariously.
Perhaps, we as a nation have grown too old. Perhaps we, as a nation, are no longer willing to take risks. Have we become so afraid of failure, we are unwilling to try?