
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 1, 1994                   TAG: 9407010053
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By EMERY A. WHITE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHEN SACRIFICE WASN'T A DIRTY WORD

OUR COUNTRY is in serious trouble. Our alabaster cities no longer gleam. Our fruited plains are overburdened, feeding an increasingly underproductive population. The Statue of Liberty can no longer beckon because we're generating our own poor and oppressed in far greater numbers than we can rescue.

We're squandering material and human resources that we do have. Our material wealth is being directed into never-ending theme parks and gambling casinos. They basically satiate our minds with the unreal, rather than educate us to face the reality of our lives.

Our technological resources appear to be overly focused on the informational and multimedia highway. All it will accomplish is to multiply a hundredfold the smut and shlok we now receive in the form of talk shows, MTV, etc. Furthermore, at the other end of that information highway awaits a better-educated, better-motivated population of foreign countries that will out-compete us for the high-tech jobs we envision for ourselves.

That brings us to our educational system. It's in shambles, with no end in sight. The United States spends more per capita on education than almost any other country, yet we haven't harvested the results. Hungary, an impoverished country, spends one-third as much per capita on education. Yet, it ranked among the top five for the quality of its public education. Our universities are so involved with political correctness and finishing what our high schools have left undone that they can no longer fulfill their critical mission.

Why is an institution of the stature of Stanford involved in internal debate as to whether it should fail poor-performing students? Its prime mission is to prepare our youth for hard work and sacrifice that they'll soon face in the unforgiving world. The possibility of failure in that world is very real.

Political correctness leads us to the role of government in our lives. Our government has been bought by special interests, to the extent that it can no longer work for the benefit of the people. Our leadership is flawed. The previous president presented goal after goal, plan after plan, to attack our problems. All of them were underfunded, and without the demand for sacrifice. Our present leader is more realistic in facing our problems, but he's prevented from functioning to his capabilities by muckraking obstacles and a dysfunctional Congress.

God is no longer welcome in our public lives. The result is that 40 percent of births are illegitimate. This comes after millions are aborted. Paradoxically, we then turn around and spend $500,000 on one infant with long odds of survival.

The solution to all this is to return to the spirit that prevailed in this country during and after World War II. Sacrifice wasn't a dirty word. The return to our moral fiber of the past begins with the individual and the family.

Emery A. White of Salem is a retired engineer from General Electric.

by CNB