As yet another semester at Bowdoin comes to an end, so too does the present decade. Americans, and indeed members of the global community, have faced extraordinary challenges and obstacles in the past 10 years. Indeed, looking back at the events that unraveled through 2000 to 2009, it is difficult to feel anything but despair at what the decade has brought us.
Even before the decade started off, a Y2K scare that many feared would precipitate a technological apocalypse was on everyone's minds; then the technology sector actually did suffer an implosion with the collapse of the tech bubble. Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson and other major corporations were discovered to be fraudulent and their subsequent failure fueled a deep economic recession.
Two wars involving hundreds of thousands of men and women in the United States military (with assistance from other peace-seeking nations) also came about, as did unprecedented natural disasters in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and throughout the southern United States, particularly New Orleans. Then the housing market collapsed causing what economists have called the worst recession since the Great Depression. Add to it all nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, near war between Israel and Palestine in 2006 and the troublesome turn away from democracy in Russia and one cannot be blamed for ultimately feeling the decade to be a disaster.
Noticeably absent in the previously listed events of the 2000s is mention of the September 11 attacks. Not since Pearl Harbor, and before that the British attack on Washington, D.C., had the American people ever had the prospect of invasion brought so closely to their doorsteps. Of course, it is easy to imagine the hollers of protest that the terrorist attacks on 9/11, though horrific, were simply an isolated event that did not introduce a war on the United States. It was the U.S. government, the blame-America-first crowd maintains, that has been the aggressor and instigator of conflict. American intervention in Middle East affairs, unwavering support for Israel and overall American arrogance enabled terrorism to expand and led to the 9/11 attacks. The U.S., they claim, should not feel innocent.
Perhaps the blame-America-first crowd is right; maybe Americans have been the purveyors of violence and destruction around the world. To most, however, it is reasonable to suspect that the United States has in fact played a force for good in the world, not bad. What the American people see in our country, in our heritage and in our values, is not a land of broken promises but rather a nation that strives to fulfill its desire for the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
To be sure, the United States has not been perfect in its struggle and there are instances in which the U.S. has played a less then admirable role in bringing about equality. Yet the fundamental belief in the American people and the American dream is what has allowed us as a people to endure the chaos and instability of the past two and a half centuries. Time and again the president of the United States, rather then embracing the traditional values our nations had relied upon throughout its experience, has laid waste, if not expressed outright hostility, towards American beliefs.
After rushing a $787 billion so-called stimulus plan through Congress, he has pushed forcefully for a cap-and-tax program that will almost certainly penalize large and expanding companies (those that are most likely to help pull the U.S. out of the recession). By September, the president decided that despite the crippled economy and staggering national debt, it was time to bring about a trillion-dollar health care package that will force 85 percent of the population to foot the medical bill for the other 15 percent. Now, with some kind of health care bill likely to pass, he has decided to ram through yet another "stimulus" bill since the original one didn't work well enough. The hundreds of billions it will cost will only further indebt us to China and Saudi Arabia.
The president's supporters (an increasingly shrinking group, if recent polls and elections are any indicator) maintain that it's all necessary. For one reason or another, the circumstances before us today are so exceptional and unlike anything ever seen before in U.S. history, that they require us to abandon our time tested principals. The era of big government, an expanding welfare state and handicapping of the free market are what is necessary to solve our nations problems.
Ayn Rand once wrote that, "It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master." In hearing the rhetoric of the present administration it becomes clear that somehow all of the "sacrifices" we are being forced to make are supposed to help us. As we enter a new decade, however, we must not forget what exactly we are sacrificing: a belief in the resiliency and spirit of the American people.
Jose Cespedes is a member of the Class of 2012.