The 1980 Winter Olympic hockey team. Remember them? Do you remember what the world was like at that time, specifically the United States?
That "Miracle on Ice" story wasn't simply about winning a Gold Medal in the Olympics. Ayatollah Khomeini had held Americans hostage for over 100 days, the Soviets had invaded Afganistan (oh the irony!), domestic inflation was out of control as was unemployment and the economy.
Sounds kinda familiar doesn't it?
If you don't understand the impact that hockey team had on the sport, let me try to summarize it.
This was a team of 20 hockey players - amateur hockey players - whose average age was 21. Herb Brooks had 7 months to these guys into a team that would face the Soviet Union team. Up until the 1980 Olympics, Russia
DOMINATED Hockey. Period, end of story. They were unbeatable. "Soviets players were Darth Vader on skates, unemotional soldiers from the evil empire."
The ultimate underdog story, to say the least. For anybody who lived through it, I'm sure you can remember what a great moment in history that was. I was reminded of this as I watched the movie "Miracle".
There was something else in that movie that made my ears perk up. It was an except from a speech Jimmy Carter gave in July of 1979. Here is an excerpt:
I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.
I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.
The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.
The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July.
It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.
Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.
As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.
These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.
We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.
We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.
These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed. Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.
What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.
Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like it, and neither do I. What can we do? I know that was a lot to read. Here is a link to the entire speech:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html
Say what you about Jimmy Carter as a President, but the content of that speech nailed it for me. I challenge our current leaders to be so bold and attempt to address the reasons why, almost 30 years later, we are practucally no further along from that moment in time and in most cases - worse.
