Letter 1
Critical thinking:
I am sending this letter to all of my grandchildren. It expresses my concern with events jn our country of late, You can view this as either the views of my generation to yours; or as the rantings of a doddering old fool. But decide post not pre! I feel some responsibility for you grandchildren since I was instrumental in the birth of one of your parents. The America of my early years was a wonderful place. The technology we developed in the last half of the 20th century pulled the entire world up both in economics and 
freedom. I believed it would go on for hundreds of years. The first six decades of my life I believed that anyone could achieve the 'American Dream'. That is, with good choices, hard work and some talent you could build the life you wanted. Your Grandmother and I achieved this. We have had a wonderful life. But the last couple of decades has dampened my optimism and for the first time I see our country and our society losing its way and in peril of being lost. There are some who do not like this country and want to tear it down, and since they are within not without, they are the most difficult to overcome.
We have lots of smart people today but too few who are wise. Smart people know a lot of things. Wisdom is the ability to objectively observe and critically analyze before coming to a conclusion. Unfortunately, these two attributes of wisdom that are so desperately needed are the two things our educators have stopped teaching. They teach what to think not how to think. We are living in the so-called information age; we are barraged with more information than we can possibly process. Perhaps it should be called the misinformation age, since there is so much misinformation out there. The trick is in the separation. I could list a plethora of examples where these two attributes of wisdom are missing but then this would be a book and not a letter. I will only take two current examples and show how objective observation and critical thinking will get you to the truth.
The first is our country is often accused of being colonists or imperialists. In my 
lifetime we defeated Japan, Germany and Italy in WWII. Within 10 years these were all free, thriving, independent nations (with the exception of the Eastern half of Germany that was controlled by communist Russia). A starker example is Korea, where the war ended in a stalemate and the country was divided. The Southern half which we controlled was soon an independent and thriving country while the Northern half is still a police state. So, if we are colonists, we are surely the most inept in the history of the world. How could anyone objectively look at the facts of history and conclude America was imperialist?
The second example addresses the claims that we are a racist country. The chaos and confusion in our country over racism is only possible because we have had 30 plus years of what award-winning teacher, John Taylor Gatto, in 1992 called "Dumbing us down". We do have an inequitable distribution of wealth between Blacks and others that is a festering sore on our national conscience. But we need to stop just pouring the same old medicine on it. It's time to pull off the scab and find out what is really under there. You have to be dumb to believe that the high crime rate of Blacks is the fault of the police and defunding the police will fix it. You have to be dumb to believe it is Whitey's fault even if Whitey is dumb enough to believe it. You have to be dumb to think this is a racist country when people of all colors are busting down our borders to get in. You have to be dumb to think two wrongs will make a right: Affirmative Action, quotas and preferences are the only examples of systematic racism in this country. We have tried them for 60 years and the sore is still festering. You have to be dumb to not see that putting the color into the name of organizations or events (Iike BIack Lives Matter or Black Mothers of Victims) is blatant racism and goes against all that MLK fought and died for. You have to be dumb to listen to the failed Blacks and opportunists who call for reparations and ignore the intellectually successful Blacks who say we need to fix the dysfunction of the basic family unit. You have to be dumb to even listen to a Critical Race Theory who's basic, though unstated, premise is that all people are not created equal. We better wake up in this country or we will soon be reading the new Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire"- in Mandarin!
Confession: My generation is the generation between the 'Greatest Generation' that fought in WWII and the 'Boomer Generation' that was born after WWII. My generation didn't create the problems that have destroyed our education system but it is guilty of not killing them in their infancy. We should have done that and I am sorry we didn't. But now more than half of my generation has passed. We will not be able to fix it. This country is worth saving. That is now your task. May God bless you and make it possible,
Grampy (August 2021)
Ps. All of my children were above average and some brilliant and I assume the same for my grandchildren. So, this is not a judgment on any of you. But there are obviously millions out there who cannot think critically. So, this is like the starfish story by Loren Eisley:
One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.
Approaching the boy, he asked, "What are you doing?
The youth replied, "Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them back, they'll die."
"Son," the man said, "don't you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can't make a difference!"
After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf.
Then, smiling at the man, he said: "l made a difference for that one. "
link to next letter: Wisdom: WISDOM
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