Change or No Change

                        CHANGE or NO CHANGE

I am sure most of my readers have heard the phrase “practice makes perfect.” If you are like me, you probably didn’t know where that originated. I was curious and looked it up and found that it had various uses in Greek time but was introduced first in the United States in the “Autobiography of John Adams.”

The thrust of this admonition I think means that if you keep doing things over and over, you will improve, and at some point you will perfect that skill.

I know this is true because I am not a walker. I am much more a couch potato. However, when I was away a couple summers ago on an island for three months, I started walking my dogs every day. First day I tired after about a quarter mile. So I walked a quarter mile for about a week and then ventured forth a little farther along the path. Each week, I ventured further. By the end of the summer, I was easily walking six miles a day.

Now for you runners or serious athletes, that might not seem like much of an accomplishment but for me, it was Olympic Medal work!

Of course I didn’t keep it up over the winter, and when I returned to the island, I could walk only a mile.

Perhaps the moral of this story is that if you stop practicing, you have to start again at square one.

Many of my readers have probably also read at one time or another Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I understand what he was saying, too, even though it seems to contradict Adams. Einstein was saying through trial and error one finds his way to the answer. If you try one approach and it fails and you make no changes in that approach, why would you expect anything but failure?  You will have to try many things before you may happen on the best answer.

I resolve these differences, using my examples, to mean that if I had kept walking only a quarter of a mile, I would not have known one day I could walk six miles.  But repeating my little accomplishment and then forging on in an attempt to see if I could do better rewarded me rewarded with success.

  

Doing the same thing again and again without change may equate with insanity, but making minor modifications or even small attempts at improvement can produce very good results.

Semantics

SEMANTICS

In the days of World War I and World War II people lived in a more straightforward America. As a student of history I had occasion to read many accounts of the “great wars” and it was evident to me that the American government and the American people acted in concert and with great patriotism and a pride in basic honesty.

In those days they agreed America was good.

They saw America as an example for the world. And interestingly, many other peoples in other nations saw America that way, too.

When bad things were happening in far away places America could, and did, make the difference. And the difference we made was for something good. And other nations were grateful and admiring of our character.

Because of this sentiment young men raced to the recruiting offices to be part of the cavalry America was sending to save the day. Bunting was hung in windows. Families with servicemen were honored and respected.

George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin and other composers were busy writing patriotic songs such as “Over There,” and “Keep the Home Fires Burning.”

Over there, over there,

Send the word, send the word over there

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming

The drums rum-tumming everywhere.

So prepare, say a prayer,

Send the word, send the word to beware -

We'll be over, we're coming over,

And we won't come back till it's over, over there.

And we adopted some patriotic music from our friends in Britain to stoke the fires of our own nation, such as the following from Ivor Novello, the British composer:

Keep the Home Fires Burning,

While your hearts are yearning.

Though your lads are far away

They dream of home.

There's a silver lining

Through the dark clouds shining,

Turn the dark cloud inside out

'Til the boys come home.

And when the boys did come home they were greeted as they came off the ships, feted in their own hometowns, honored with parades small and large.

More importantly, they were celebrated throughout their lives with national holidays and times of remembrance.

Lets fast forward to today.

The ground under our feet has steadily shifted.

Many Americans don’t like America. They are critical openly.

In the intervening years the nature of war has changed and the instant communications possibilities have made conducting wars very difficult, never more obvious than when reporters were imbedded with our service people.

There has been very little unanimity about our foreign engagements. In fact there have been marches, riots and the public damning of almost all our involvements in foreign wars, which are now called actions, or internal revolutions, or by other appellations designed to pretend they are somehow different from what we used to call a “war.”  We even attempted to put a good face on some actions by labeling them an “Arab Spring.” We can call our involvements, interventions and just plain meddling whatever we want but we all know exactly what they are.

In these more modern incidents the young men, and young women, have not been racing to enlist so that America could put on a white hat, mount a white steed and rush to the aide of our friends. On some occasions, the rushing that was being done was to Canada, to avoid participation.

With the elimination of the draft we have changed drastically the type of person who serves in our military. Instead of a cross section of America we have what we have called a more “professional” army. To some extent we have lost the patriotic ardor that went with being part of a noble cause.

And “war” has become a word much less used. Now we have conflicts. We have missions. We stand more on the outskirts of skirmishes while providing materiel in the form of planes, guns and bombs to other people who actually do the fighting.

We have gone from transparency in world affairs to playing a role much more like the Wizard of Oz hiding behind the big curtain.

As Americans we are seldom united the way we were in the past. Our sense of national pride has been torn apart by internal disputes and political bickering.

When was the last time we came together as a people, a people who knew in their hearts America was good and was capable of leading and of vanquishing foes of good?

One could argue the world is a very different place. And that would be a fair statement.

But does that require a lessening of appropriate national pride?

Should it encourage us to be less demanding that good should prevail over bad? Must we pretend to be something we are not?

We don’t really send armies any more to fight evil. We send advisors. As I was writing this piece the president announced he was sending 474 more advisors to the Middle East. Why don’t we just say we are doing a troop buildup? Because we cannot as we have previously said we are withdrawing.

This is just a pretense to calm the people and to suggest we are not engaged. Well, if you take the time to read beyond the headline you find that the advisors we send often number in the hundreds and occasionally in the thousands.

And their uniform is not the Brooks Brothers suit and they are not carrying briefcases.  When someone actually captures a picture of an advisor he is usually in a camouflage uniform and carrying a pretty impressive rifle.

And when they come home there are no parades.

And while they are there no one is writing songs to keep those of us at home wound up and proud.

Not too long ago we were told “al Qaida is on the run.”  We were told that ISIS was a “JV team” not to concern us.  We were told Bashir Assad was a very bad guy just last year. Last week we were considering partnering with him against ISIS.

Sir Walter Scott could well have written his famous quote today: 'Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive'?

We are not the once proud nation of our past. We are not the beacon on the hill to the rest of the world. And as we have gone down this path of covert operation, infiltration, nation building (or tearing down) we have less respect for ourselves and much less respect around the world.

The future is not promising.

It would be hard to regain what we had in our hearts while fighting in WWI and WWII. True national pride seems to be slipping away. It can be argued that future disagreements may well be decided by technology not boots on the ground, If so, the nation with the best technology, the most advanced computers will rule the world.

Many see this as the natural progression of history.

I have a strong preference for the way we used to do it. 

Give me an Irving Berlin again:

"While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, 
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free, 
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, 
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer. " 



“God Bless America, 
Land that I love. 
Stand beside her, and guide her 
Thru the night with a light from above. 
From the mountains, to the prairies, 
To the oceans, white with foam 
God bless America, My home sweet home