Last week I watched a documentary on the StoryTV channel about the days in 1941 where the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and America was thrust into a world war.   I happened to pull out a column by Don Feder in the Washington Times last May, on what he called the character crisis, which he said was long in the making.

He wrote that “the Greatest Generation was all about taking responsibility. From 1941 to 1945 it took on the job of saving humanity from Nazism and Japanese imperialism. They came home and took responsibility for rebuilding the economy and halting the advance of communism internationally. From there, it was all downhill. The Baby Boomers threw a gigantic hissy fit because it didn’t inherit a perfect world. Most have since come down to earth. With each successive generation – Generation X, millennials, Generation Z – the sense of entitlement grows, and the sense of responsibility shrinks until today, we have a generation that yawns as we slide toward the abyss while it scans its favorite dating ap.”

“Character is made up of equal parts of honesty, integrity, diligence and duty. Mostly you get it from your family. Today, fewer and fewer families are intact. Those who are turning our cities into Dante’s Inferno grew up without fathers in the home.”

Well, I don’t take that dark a view, but I do think that Don Feder is right about the importance of character.