Ben Stein and the Leadership Crisis

You've heard me talk frequently here about our leadership crisis. On Sunday Nov. 11, 2007 Ben Stein's column, Everybody's Business, in the New York Times had an article entitled It's Time to Act Like Grown Ups. You should read the whole article, but look at this near the end:

"But it certainly hurts to spend day after day, as I did this fall, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center — where the incredibly brave wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan learn about walking and eating without their natural legs and arms — and to realize that the America for which they’re fighting is led in so many arenas, especially the money one, by such weak, disappointing specimens."

The "weak, disappointing specimens" he refers to are our leaders. After reading Mr. Stein's article I got fired up and gave this short speech: Better Leaders for a Better Future. Boy, do we need better leadership.

Here's an article about how our leaders killed an expensive spy satellite. Here's an article on how the Dept. of Education lost the results of a reading exam because no one proofread the test. What incompetence!

Just last week I was thinking how I almost went to Vietnam and my kids were almost old enough to go to the Iraq war. I resolved that my grand children should not be caught up in a poorly thought out foreign war. Then today's Dallas Morning News (11/25/07) had an article about some guy whose brother died in Vietnam and his son died in Iraq. It was on the front page: Family Endures War's Deadly Echo.

Better leadership is a matter of life and death. We must start developing a new generation of leaders, and we must start as soon as possible.

Robert