Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday we target: Focus

  • With two days to go before election, is focus on Presidential introductory music instructive?
  • Can we thank Sir Walter Scott and “Lady of the Lake” for genesis but the American adaptation over the years since the early 1800s provides for four ruffles and flourishes followed by 30 seconds or so of rousing music?
  • What about the lyrics?

“Hail to the Chief we have chosen for the nation,
Hail to the Chief! We salute you, one and all.
Hail to the Chief, as we pledge cooperation,
In proud fulfillment of a great, noble call.

Yours is the aim to make this grand country grander,
This you will do, that is our strong, firm belief.
Hail to the one we selected as commander,
Hail to the President! Hail to the Chief!”

  • In this paean of expectation and celebration, is the focus on making our grand country even grander for one and all?
  • What elements of personality, policy and execution will enable such grandeur, such focus, and will we welcome and deserve it because we are tough enough and willing to pay for it?
  • Does the sheer size, complexity and profligacy of government (Milton Friedman’s big problems) make solution impossible without annealing and cooperative political, monetary and fiscal forces and that of a willing people?
  • After almost 250 years of constitutional government, are we so burdened that Thoreau’s ” life is frittered away by detail, Simplify, Simplify” falls on deaf and divided ears?
  • Is the great and noble call then to focus on the Lincoln admonition that government should only do for the people what the people cannot responsibly do for themselves?
  • Are the imperatives of the Preamble enough to keep focus on our great and noble call?
  • Is it not an enduring and preeminent America?
  • Hail to the Chief and we all who chose and elected opportunity for proud fulfillment?
  • Stay focused?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The answers and actions are yours.