Yes, of course the issues I ve discussed seem intractable. Yes, we re all too focused on doing whatever we must do in our own daily busyness. But if business has been the engine, and businessmen the beneficiaries of America s incredible worldly success, surely business and businessmen have the duty to use some of their resources and their extraordinary ability for innovation, organization, and reaching new frontiers to help to build a better world. Such a commitment requires little more than an enlightened sense of self-interest, a combination of Adam Smith s economic philosophy that fosters the wealth of nations with his moral philosophy based on honor, dignity, and nobility. American business must make America its business.
Education is the foundation of knowledge and discovery, of morality and motivation.
Yet American education is far behind where it ought to be. Relative to other developed nations, our ranking in mathematics and science and language is no better than mediocre. Worse, we have an underclass of young American citizens who, at tender age, are almost estopped from ever fulfilling a productive role in society. One of nine high school students fails to graduate. One-third of our teenagers never enter college.