True North – The Next American “Reset”

National Pride - 

We tend not to credit our national pride to the nefarious escapades of misguided “leaders” whose lack of discipline and accountability often leads to global mockery and shame. No, we are better than that.  Our national pride emanates from the efforts of the once unpopular, driven and principled servant leaders that sought a better world for everyone, not just for himself or herself.

When we think  “American Pride” most are reminded of the sacrifices made by more then 1,300,000 men and women killed in combat since the American Revolution. 

Their efforts forged a nation that has provided most in this global generation a lifestyle that would have been incomprehensible only fifty years earlier. Yet somehow, along the way, we have forgotten our once seemingly inculcated purpose.

When our founding fathers, and yes mothers too, envisioned our break away independent states they knew it would take the continued oversight and effort of an active and involved citizenry to offset the natural effect of our human nature to fall unwittingly victim to the “Bathsheba Syndrome”.

They knew it would take the indomitable spirit, shaped by ordinary men and women whom demonstrated physical, mental and moral leadership. The type of leaders with courage and strength casts in the cauldrons of shared learning and shared wisdom; an alchemy of citizens to repeatedly “reset” the nation's compass to “True North”.

Leadership -

Leadership is a process that requires the hardening of body and mind, the fusion of discipline. Leadership is spiritual and earned, never given, entitled or bestowed. 

Spiritual - 

The term spiritual is not to be confused with religious. Our nation was born and built upon the understanding that religion, historically speaking, leads to divisions, intolerance and hypocrisy.

For some, separating the two is a challenge. But a necessary one which preserves and protects our national ethos.  After all, the careful separation of church and state is built solidly into the framework of our founding documents. So for the purposes of this brief, let us not confuse one with the other for they are separate and distinctly different. 

Citizenship - 

We, the American citizen, are collectively responsible for the spiritual health of our nation. That sense of spirit inside of us that causes us to be different, to make the right decisions even when it is unpopular to do so. 

Should we lose the spiritual health of our nation, we will have failed as citizens and will be forever branded as the generation that turned its back on all those whom sacrificed their lives to give us our freedoms to self govern.  

Accountability - 

The American citizen is born with the inalienable rights guaranteed in our founding documents. But with those rights come the responsibility of self-governance, of, by and for the people.  When we fail to hold and be held accountable for these responsibilities, we endanger the totality of our system.

When our elected leaders swear an oath of office, and we the people fail to hold them accountable to that oath, there exist a collective abrogation of our responsibilities as Americans.

We are a nation of over 300,000,000 American citizens and only a very small percentage have turned their back on the honor of their citizenship.  No, we are not perfect.  But we do have an obligation to solve our problems and police ourselves.

Those we entrust for maintaining our standards and disciplines are allowing them to erode. This is our problem and we are the solution.  We the people are, by design, the leadership of our nation and we need to step up and be such.

We will continue to have a problem with holding our entrusted and elected leaders responsible when we fail to hold ourselves responsible. 

At home, in the classroom, in the halls of Congress, and abroad, we have got to have a strong sense of moral character and ask ourselves when it became ok to turn our  backs on leadership and accountability?

Saying “it has always been this way” is not the correct answer, but rather serves to enable further failure of character, accountability, and responsibility.

We all need to get back to holding ourselves to higher standards of accountability. 

To start looking at the source of problems with an open mind and a willingness to realize our preconceptions may be exactly wrong.

Our accountability and that which we hold our leadership to must become effective, swift and fast.

The American Reset - 

We are a rich, benevolent, sentimental nation, not because of what this generation has done, but rather because of the character of what those great leaders and citizens of earlier generations did to enshrine what is best about our nation.

Therefore our greatest challenge as a nation will be our willingness to immerse ourselves in their teachings. To realign ourselves again with the ethos of those that have given their lives to this nation, who know the pain of loss and sacrifice. 

To them we owe a profound debt. To them we show our honor by being honorable. We are and should be our brothers' and sisters' keepers.

It is time to suit up and fix this. The world is watching.  It is now our turn to get our nation back to “True North”.

Respectfully,