Lynch Pen : Laws designed to provide protection
Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The recent death of Hall of Fame professional football player Gene Upshaw takes away from our life a tremendous example of an athlete turned social and business leader. There were many who questioned some of his decisions in his second career as the leader of the National Football League Players Association. No one questioned his abilities on the football field, however, and most professional football players are better positioned financially because of his 25 years in the equivalent of their players union. He will be greatly missed by sports fans everywhere both as an athlete and as an example of what one can do after a career in football.
There was another death recently that went unnoticed by most of us, probably because the impact of his life was most pronounced more than 30 years ago when he came to this country from Russia. If not for an article by Cal Thomas in the Opinion section of The Benton County Sunday Daily Record / Democrat Gazette on Aug. 17, I would not have known of the death of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. A friend who read the same article took the initiative to follow up on Cal Thomas' article and read an address that Solzhenitsyn had delivered at Harvard University, June 8, 1978. My friend suggested that I read it and gave me instructions on how to find it online. If you should care to read it, it probably is available many ways, the library among them. The easy way is online, using a search engine such as Google and entering Solzhenitsyn's name and the Harvard address of 1978. I would strongly recommend reading this classic work by Solzhenitsyn if at all possible.
When Solzhenitsyn was exiled to this country from his native Russia, he received a tremendous amount of newspaper coverage. He was a noted novelist and I would guess political writer which offended the Russian power structure. If everything he wrote in Russia was as thought provoking and soul searching as his speech to Harvard, it is easy to see why they wanted him out of their hair. If you remember, 30 years ago we were in a much different world. America was the most respected and most powerful nation on earth. McDonald's didn't have golden arches on every street corner and the world through realistic eyes and we were deluding ourselves when we tried to convert the world to our way of life and our way of thinking. He noted that we as a society had allowed self-gratification and materialism to become the central focus in our quest for happiness. This, he said, came at the expense of our moral and character development. It is little wonder that the American establishment - news media, political and financial leaders - took offense at his critique of our practices.
If you look at the two future super powers - China and India - it is easy to see where our selfish business interests have gotten us in those two countries. This is largely due to their large populations which our business communities need to develop as future markets as their standard of living "improved"to our standards. Even today Wall Street sees the underdeveloped areas of China as potential for our products while China ship's its manufactured goods to us in exchange for our paper currency.
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn came to our country with a thorough knowledge of Communism's failures in Russia and offered new insight into our country and its workings. We were no more ready to hear a warning then than we are today. Perhaps we should have been required to read the Harvard address and then be tested on our understanding of the consequences of not needing his advice 30 years ago. I, for one, did not read it until recently, and find it sums up my concerns about where we have failed ourselves in the last 30 years. It might not have been as effective in changing my views back then, but I'm sure I would not have forgotten his warning. The moral decay witnessed in my lifetime has been accelerated by more television networks, looser standards for any form of "information"and the lust for more and more personal material fulfillment. Recently, on television, a program interviewed a young lady who had posed nude for Playboy magazine. Her motives of course were money and it would "further her career. "She was certainly attractive and will probably be very successful in her endeavors, but it speaks volumes about our priorities and what we are willing to do for material gain. It would be interesting to see if the success is worth the price when she is 60 years old.
We have allowed too much personal freedom to overwhelm our system of laws which were designed to provide protection from exploitation. Criminals are frequently provided more rights by society than the victims of their crimes, said Solzhenitsyn. Are we too far down the path to turn back ? Only time and a period of national reassessment will tell.
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