We are not a nation of individuals.
Our national myth is a story of brave individuals, carving out trails in the wilderness; lone colonies standing up against the British Empire; homesteaders and their little houses on the prairie. That’s not the whole of it though. That’s like saying that a movie is the product of the actors, and forgetting that long list of names that scroll by at the end.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denigrating the accomplishments of singular individuals. We wouldn’t have the auto industry without Ford, or modern physics without Einstein, or Microsoft without Gates. But Gates would not have gotten far beyond his garage without teams of programmers and engineers and salespeople, not to mention millions of customers. Without a community of scientists for peer review and collaboration, Einstein would have died a patent clerk. And where would Ford have been without his assembly line workers?
What we, as a nation, have accomplished we have done together. Those roads we drive on every day? The schools that taught most of us to read and add? Those exist because we, collectively, made it happen. And government was the tool we used to do it.
It’s not perfect, not even close. But if we want it to be better, we have to work together to make it better.
If this nation is to be made worthy of being called a great nation, it will not be saved by brave individuals who head into the hills. Its problems won’t be solved by hard working professionals “going Galt.” It will be made great by those of us who stay here and force it to work right. By those who stay here and work together.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denigrating the accomplishments of singular individuals. We wouldn’t have the auto industry without Ford, or modern physics without Einstein, or Microsoft without Gates. But Gates would not have gotten far beyond his garage without teams of programmers and engineers and salespeople, not to mention millions of customers. Without a community of scientists for peer review and collaboration, Einstein would have died a patent clerk. And where would Ford have been without his assembly line workers?
What we, as a nation, have accomplished we have done together. Those roads we drive on every day? The schools that taught most of us to read and add? Those exist because we, collectively, made it happen. And government was the tool we used to do it.
It’s not perfect, not even close. But if we want it to be better, we have to work together to make it better.
If this nation is to be made worthy of being called a great nation, it will not be saved by brave individuals who head into the hills. Its problems won’t be solved by hard working professionals “going Galt.” It will be made great by those of us who stay here and force it to work right. By those who stay here and work together.