Remember Ben Stein, the boring teacher in the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"? Or, maybe you remember him from his seven-year stint as the host of the Emmy award-winning game show, "Win Ben Stein's Money."
Stein's experience extends far beyond Hollywood. He's a former speech writer for Presidents Ford and Nixon and did legal work for Nixon during the Watergate years. He writes frequently for a number of publications including the Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and he's authored more than a dozen books.
He gave a speech recently at the Commonwealth Club of California titled "How Not to Ruin Your Life," and you can hear it on Word for Word. The self-proclaimed Eisenhower Republican talked about what he sees are the major problems facing the world today, from burdening future generations with debt to the vacuous nature of popular media. He also expressed concern that Americans care more about getting rich than each other. During his speech, he said:
"People say to me all the time ... this is a big country where money is a God and this is how things are. It can't be improved this is just the way it is, and I say it's got to be improved because we're not a nation of shared ethnicity or blood. We're of many different blood lines. What holds us together is not being Greeks or Jews or Germans or Irish or Italians or African-Americans or Hispanics or Asians. It's ethical principles. It's teaching community, hard work, study, respect for elders. If we don't have those things society can not hold it together."
Is Ben Stein right? Have Americans lost their sense of brotherhood and sisterhood? Do people care more about making money than giving back to their communities? If you catch his comments on Word for Word, what do you think about his ideas about the education crisis and popular media? Is Stein onto something or do you think he has an outdated view of society?
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Larissa Anderson
Producer, Word for Word
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Comments: 6
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It explains why nations and other groups fail to hold together despite people being mutually interdependent. We need each other but we treat each other like enemies. It also explains what we can do to fix the situation so we hold together without changing anyone's mind or making them better people. It isn't spiritual, it isn't magic, it isn't done using any force at all. It's just good sense which, since you have it, will make it easy for you to understand.
We don't expect people to take personal responsibilty for their actions.
We have our kids play games without winners and losers.
We give kids "self esteem" instead of them earning it.
We try to solve social problems by starting government programs to solve them. To pay for these government programs you must tax me more. To pay for those additional taxes I must work harder, more hours, work an extra job, or have both parents work. If both parents are working more, they are spending less time at home, if they spend less time at home kids will not be raised as well as they would if both parents worked less. If kids aren't being raised as well, you have more societal problems that need more goverment programs.
Lather, rinse, repeat.............
That's the problem.
Ben Stein is a very good read and quite a talented person.
In our countries beginnings one could begin again by simply changing locations or going bankrupt. Now that corporations are the real voting citizens (remember money equals free speech according to the supreme court), it isn't possible to begin again. Just to suffer.
Many young people like me live like this and frankly have given up on our fellow citizens to help us. We have a god in this country and that is capitalism. As a system of economics it is amazing. As a god it is abusive, divisive, and unholy. Capitalism isn't a value but a system. We need to as a country place community first. Let folks start over again when they get over their heads. (more liberal bankruptcy laws) And finally, not equate money with happiness. Spending time with families and engaging in our communities again is the only way that this country can rebuild itself.
I enjoyed it. Especially the parts about community and the need for more of it and, I also like his relationship with his parents. I found that part very motivational and heartwarming.
Keep going Ben Stein.
You are saying some things that more people need to hear.
Not sure what America Stein is referring to or remembers. Americans have always been obsessed with money and wealth It became nationalized and democratized back in Eisenhower's days when rampant comsumerism was born.
It seems to me that this generation of young people is much more interested in community service than those who preceded it....Including my own.
Gotta love those conservatives with their rosed colored glasses obsessively focused on a mythic past. BTW, exactly when did this mythic brotherhood/sisterhood exist in American history for anyone other than WASPs? I'm sure this would be of great interest to any American who happens to be of color or who is of irish, italian, jewish, etc. descent.