Death of a nation

I've been noticing deaths in the headlines, of famous people. Everyone knows about Michael Jackson's passing, but there have been a number of others recently.

The ones that stand out to me, that have been at least a peripheral part of my life up to now, include Ed McMahon, David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Karl Malden, Robert McNamara and athletes Alexis Argüello and Steve McNair. Some of these have had value in my life, most haven't...they've just been people that everyone knows, whose names are familiar to most of the people of my generation.

But their deaths got me to thinking about how my generation -- the tail-end of the "Baby Boom" of the fifties -- is slowly but surely ceding its place to another generation. A generation to whom those names are but a vagrant breeze in their memory. What kind of United States of America will this new generation inherit? And what will they make of it?

My mother died in March. She would have been 94 in November. She remembered a time when there were no cars, no television or computers, when radio was new. She remembered planting and harvesting a crop of corn with her brother during the Great Depression. She lived through at least 5 wars -- sending her husband off to fight in World War II, 2 sons in Vietnam, and a grandson in the present war. She made me sit down and watch Neil Armstrong's steps on the moon when it was broadcast on TV..."This is history in the making!" she said. And she witnessed the rise of the computers, although she never got the hang of e-mail. She always preferred a real letter written on paper.

I think about the changes that have happened in Mom's lifetime, and the changes that have come in just my lifetime...I remember when the last of those born in slavery died in this nation, one by one. The last of the men who fought in World War I died out, one by one, and now those who fought in World War II are disappearing. The last of the Tuskegee Airmen are slowly passing away in the headlines of our newspapers, one by one. And -- one by one -- the rights we've enjoyed as the freest nation on the face of the earth are disappearing, just the same way.

Will the generation that is rising up now as adults even remember a time when they did not have to present identification for everything? Will they remember a time when they were not photographed by security cameras everywhere they went? A time when their personal information was not available to any government official with the proper equipment to read the little strip on the back of their driver's license. Will they remember that Social Security cards used to have a disclaimer printed on them that they could not be used for identification? Will they realize that Social Security used to be "secure"? That it was an old-age trust fund set up to be self-sustaining, not a teat for every government program to suck on? Will they remember when a dollar had the assurance printed on its face that you could turn it in for the equivalent amount in precious metals?

Will our children have a memory of a time when they did not have to be concerned about the NSA and other criminal factions using the "back door" in Windows to spy on their online activities? Will they ever know that the founders of this country said, ""When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."?

Will our children remember a time when they did not fear strangers, or policemen, or the government of these United States? Will our grandchildren grow up having any idea what it means to be free?