Letter from an American Hero

“It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a pacific station that grate characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and statesman.”

This statement was written by a little known American hero. Her name was Abigail Adams. If the name sounds familiar, it should. She was the wife of John Adams, our second president and the mother of John Quincy Adams, our sixth president. She wrote this statement in a letter to her son.

John Adams had to go to France during the Revolutionary War to work out a treaty with the French. He was to go with another great American hero, Benjamin Franklin. Because Mr. Franklin was going, Abigail and her husband realized that this was an extraordinary opportunity for their son.

John Adams and Abigail Adams both grew up in very poor farming families and nether had much of an education. When John Quincy arrived on the scene, they decided that he would be highly educated. So, they took every opportunity they could to educate their young son. And an opportunity had just arisen in the form of Benjamin Franklin.

On the voyage over to France and on the way back there would be lots of down time and while in France there would be educational opportunities as well. Abigail and John knew that if their son could spend time with Benjamin Franklin while he did his experiments during the down times as well as witness treaty negotiations, that would be a much better education then he could get in any school. So, they decided that it was important for John Quincy to go with his father.

The trip over would be very dangerous. The voyage would take place in the winter time when the seas where at there worst. On top of that, they would have to run an English blockade. Even if they where able to run the blockade, surely the English would be looking for them and trying to stop them before they got to France. John Quincy knew all of this and was not very happy about it.

John Quincy did not want to go, but they knew that this experience of dealing with these difficulties would help him to grow in ways that he could not even fathom.

So as a part of convincing John Quincy to go along with the plan his mother wrote the letter with the above statement in it.

This statement is a very powerful one, especially in this day and age. I believe it is so powerful because we lost the knowledge that true intelligence comes from solving problems and "contending with difficulties". And self-esteem can not be taught, it is earned.

Political Correctness is one of my biggest pet peeves. I believe that Political Correctness is robbing us of our freedom as well as a good education. We spend so much time worrying about our children's feelings that we are forgetting to teach them. And we are spending so much time trying to make our children's lives antiseptic of pain and disappointment that we don't realize we're also taking away a chance for them to develop real character.

Character is so very important for our children to have and if we raze an entire generation without character it makes me worry about the future of, not just our nation, but our society.

I hope we can take a lesson form the Adams' and remember where real intelligence comes from.

In future blogs I will be writing more about the poison known as Political Correctness because one can not begin to be motivated or inspired without first developing character. And one can not develop character without overcoming the pain of disappointment and failure.