Well, assessing the legacy … It seems to me one things which we should be thinking about, is that McNamara represented all of those superficial qualities of brightness and intelligence and education that are so revered in our culture. This whole idea that you judge young kids today on the basis of what their test scores are, how smart they are, how much information they can digest, how much they can give back to you and remember. That’s what MacNamara was good at. He was bright and he was smart, but he had no moral intelligence. What strikes me as one of the many things we can learn from this McNamara experience is that we’ve got to stop revering these superficial qualities of brightness and smartness, and bring up a generation which thinks in moral terms, which has moral intelligence, and which asks questions not, “Do we win or do we lose?” Asks questions, " Is this right? Is it wrong?" And McNamara never asked that question. Even when he was leaving, even when he decided he had to leave the post of Secretary of Defense, even when he left, his leaving was not based on the fact that the war was wrong. His leaving was based on the fact, well, we weren’t going to win.
This comment is easily applicable to all generations of youth. Our society has a bad habit of putting an emphasis on the test scores kids get and not on less tangible characteristics, like moral uprightness, character, honesty, courage.
I have known my fair share of child geniuses - the ones with the super high SAT scores, the ones who get into the top med schools and law schools. Most of the time they're like human machines, with super dedication to school work, who engage in occasional charitable work, but who would never dedicate their life to a worthy cause. They are the products of their parents who groom them to become socially acceptable elites. These are the people who usually become the heirs of super rich elites who keep their mouths shut and go with the flow to avoid causing any trouble and jeopardizing their social rank/job prospects/marital prospects.
In contrast, I have known plenty of men and women who went to small schools and do amazing things with their lives and who live for helping and aiding others through their God given gifts and talents. These people are never patted on the back, they were never expected to amount to anything special.
Yes, there are people who go to the top schools, get super high SAT scores and turn out to be great leaders and activists. But the vast majority are trained to play it safe, keep quiet and engage in socially acceptable forms of activism... like speaking out about Darfur and not Gaza or Iraq or Afghanistan. It's easy to speak out about Darfur, our government has claimed there is genocide going on there. You have the state's support. Say all that you want. But as for the three others cases, speak out and risk losing your social status. Kids today, especially in higher social ranks, are encouraged by parents, teachers, and others to shut up and ignore the crimes of our own government, and instead focus on the evil of other nations.
Our parents and teachers and elders should be teaching our youth to speak out against our own government's crimes, first and foremost, because that's what we can change and alter most easily. It's like when people tell Muslims in America to fix the Saudi government's policies towards women and minorities. I don't live there so how am I going to change anything there???
But it's easy to take up tasks like that. It's also safe. Maybe you will lose your job if you start getting ancy about government policies domestically and internationally. Maybe your friends will shun you. Maybe your family will think your crazy.
But that's the sacrifice we all make when we decide to speak out for the truth and fight against oppression and tyrrany. You don't have to get a 1400 on your SAT or go to Yale law school to understand that.
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