Safeguarding the Future

Safeguarding....6 and unleashes native talent, develops trained public servants for every field, and inspires the populace with a holy desire to be worthy citi- zens and good neighbors. The times are indeed out of joint! Yet only a confirmed pessimist would believe that American people cannot right them. The trouble is found not in ignorance about what should be, but in a lack of wisdom which would discover the causes of past tragedies and plan how to avoid them in the future. It is so much easier, for exam- ple, to care for the masses through taxation than it would be to revamp the social order so as to make them self-dependent. Man goes forward under the delusion that conditions will right themselves and thus the tax load be lightened. If he would learn from the past, he would soon discover what a hoax that idea is. Human worth must cease to be measured by ability to produce goods for which there is a ready demand at fancy profits. Instead, it must be measured by ability and willingness to produce that which, wheth- er tangible or intangible, makes the lot of the whole safer and more conducive to general well-being. Wisdom would impel us to turn back the pages of history and secure from the ancient Greeks valuable data about the age which produced the greatest single group of intellectuals the world has ever had. Plato, Aristotle, Thucidydes, Archimedes, Hi- pocrytus, Pythagoras, and many others laid the foundations for much of the world's knowledge of science, philosophy, the healing arts, and government. Records show that the ancient Greeks exalted sacrificial, vicarious living. From the day Hercules, a lad of twelve, chose the path of ser- vice instead of following the siren, Pleasure, his career was character- ized by dangerous undertakings, valiant fighting and herculean labors on behalf of the populace. The records also show that the loftiest concept of the meaning and purpose of life had been apprehended by th