The new frontier, that's what we were. At a time in history, we were known as the New World, a strange and wonderful place of untold beauty and treasure. America used to be exceptional. We used to explore possibilities. We used to give credit where it was due. We used to create and innovate. We used to be an exceptional place; can we be exceptional again?
It appears we have agreed to be mediocre at best. We allow our skin color, social standing, and possessions to speak for us. We have a split-second attention span that only allows for split-second fulfillment. We work for the wrong reasons, we compete for the wrong reasons, we vote for the wrong reasons. The only possibilities we are ready to explore are the ones that lead us to a quick buck or an easy way out. We don't seem to tilt our bright faces to the indigo heavens quite as much anymore. We don't ask how something works, only if it will work faster and cheaper than it should. We believe in fairy tales, expect something for nothing, and never take the road less traveled.
Credit and praise aren't given for talent or hard work, they're given to the loudest voice of complaint. We have decided that entitlement can be justified by something as detached as the plight of ones ancestors. Those who truly deserve reward and praise are oftentimes overlooked because they don't fill a politically correct quota. Our stone-strong defiance of British oppressors has given way to quicksand resolve. The harder we fight the decline of civility and logic, the quicker we sink in the mire because no one offers a rope of sanity to pull us to safety. It is no longer the singularity of ones talents, mind, or content of character that brings acclaim. Who you know is now far more important than what you know.
Innovation is a slave to regulation. Our creativity is sanctioned by higher powers; powers who, many times, know nothing of that which they manage. Those who still strive to create and innovate are kept securely under the thumb of bureaucracy in order to secure the future of the entitled culture. Those willing to work have become a slave to those who live with their hands out. Meanwhile, our 'anything you can do, I can do better' mentality has clipped the wings of real exceptionalism. Good intentions of telling children they can do and be anything they wish has paved the road to a purgatory where everything is merely adequate. We no longer carefully cultivate the individual greatness we all possess. Instead, we strive to selfishly be we think we want to be, eschewing our genuine talents, because we're entitled to our every desire, no matter how narrow-minded.
Being exceptional isn't about who gets there first or who does so with the most flash or cash. Being exceptional is about the race, carefully plotted and traveled. Hard work, our backs to the wind of political correctness, will set us right again. In the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, a single innovator set out to derail the country's suicidal run to failure. Art imitates life, or perhaps the other way around. Those of us who have the strength of character to say enough is enough, we must speak up. We must stop the engine of the world and start it again on our return to exceptionalism.
