The Visions of Tom Friedman

I highly recommend Thomas Friedman’s latest editorial for the New York Times. Thanks go to my friend Kollin Min for pointing it out to me. In this piece, Friedman argues eloquently, citing America’s comparatively run-down airports and crumbling infrastructure, that our current economic crisis can’t be solved with a simple stimulus package. Instead we need to “Reboot America.”

Since listening to it on an audio book summer before last, I’ve been a fan of Friedman’s book The World is Flat. Friedman’s writing is always straightforward and his arguments are highly persuasive, although I have to admit that his style is pedestrian, repetitive and sometimes uninspired. For that reason, I haven’t read his other recent book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, but I’m sure that it offers yet another crystal clear account of the challenges America faces — especially climate change, intense economic competition from abroad, and limited resources worldwide — and offers a simple yet brilliant plan for how to meet them.

Friedman’s basic idea, as briefly reflected in the latest editorial, is that our continued prosperity depends upon our commitment to being smarter. We need to invest in the human infrastructure of our nation, especially by training teachers of math and science (and liberalizing immigration laws so that the talented people who study here can actually stay here), but also by fighting illiteracy and ignorance. We need to build and strengthen our commitment to science and learning, and use these strengths to fire up American entrepreneurial energy. We can restore our economic dominance by investing in the economies of Green Energy, high technology, and ecologically friendly agriculture.

That’s why it’s so great that we have tossed out the Idiot in Chief, and installed in his place a man whose intelligence is his greatest asset. Let’s now work to make sure our children and our fellow citizens realize that our future depends upon our smarts.