I believe that we have a moral obligation to leave the next generation debt free. While you may nod your head in agreement the question before all Americans is: will we support the massive, painful cuts that will be necessary to eliminate that debt? Everyone’s ox will be gored and when spending cuts have been proposed in the past, we have tended to squeal like pigs. [See Wisconsin.]
That is because we do not want our Social Security, Pell grant, pension, health or welfare benefit to be cut. We prefer Washington take care of us from cradle to grave. We prefer “to have peace [tranquility] in our day,” rather than suffer now so the next generation might have “peace” in their day. We have this tendency to push our fiscal problems “down the road.”
I believe, however, that we have a moral obligation to leave the next generation debt free!
Thomas Paine reflects in The American Crisis I: “The heart that feels not now [1776], is dead: The blood of his children shall curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them [his children] happy.” It is a momentous moment [1776] in American history and Paine seethes with disdain the shrinking violet who conducts himself as if he were indifferent to creating a future of freedom for his children. In 2011, a major threat to America’s future is our debt and “the heart that feels not now [2011] is dead.” “The blood of our children shall curse our cowardice,” if we now choose to “shrink back at a time when a little might have saved the whole.”
In an illustrative story that highlights our obligation to future generations, Paine explains: “I [Paine] once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: A noted one [Tory], who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as most I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, “Well! Give me peace in my day.” Not a man lives on the Continent but fully believes that a separation [from England] must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent would have said, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace:” and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.” (Emphasis added)
You and I must reflect on our national debt and its implications for future generations. We, too, must find that “this single reflection [of our national debt], well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.” We must decide whether we desire “peace in our day,” by avoiding the debt threat or exhibiting the courage that highlights our moral obligation to leave our children a nation free of debt.
Paine calls the tavern owner’s sentiment about having peace in his day as “unfatherly,” and no other word could indict this man more completely. While we are put on earth to serve others, a greater obligation is to serve those who come after us by planting seeds that the next generation can cultivate and thereby, reap new harvests. For the first time in American history, it appears that we shall leave a barren land to our children that will take generations to revitalize. We are about to shackle the next generation with our debt.
Sure, the choices now are unpleasant and painful, but the right thing, the proper thing, is for us to face this challenge. We must deal with this “trouble in our day, so that our children may have peace.”
Otherwise, our children will experience riots in the streets just as Greece has because Greece made unsustainable promises to its people. America’s future generation will live through student riots like England has had. The recent events in Wisconsin are proving my point. Whatever turbulence the next generation will experience will be our fault because we will have been a people, “who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole.”
Are we “a generous parent who says, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace,” or are we to be judged as a despicable generation for our “unfatherly” conduct? Surely, if we are “unfatherly,” then our children will be right to be angry with us and we will be right to be ashamed.