Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, North Korea, and now Syria! The international crises seem to be flying at us like a swarm of bees while, at home, the U.S. struggles to maintain its unity and cohesiveness as a democratic society. Simultaneously, the dynamics of the world marketplace are making it more and more difficult for the U.S. to compete.

We should have no illusions that these are anything other than the leading edge of a political, economic, environmental and cultural tsunami that will sweep the globe in this Twenty-first Century. This new century will challenge the U.S. as it has never been challenged since the Civil War, and our lack of preparedness will place the very future of United States and our way of life in grave jeopardy.

Just as we must think exponentially to find new solutions for the cultural, political, economic and ecological challenges on the domestic stage we must also find new solutions for the crises on the international level. We need solutions that will unite the world’s developed and developing nations rather than worn out strategies from the past that divide even our most loyal allies.

These challenges on both the domestic and international arena pose a danger to the U.S. that is every bit as menacing as World War II. Somehow we must come together as a people, across all spectrums of our society and in all of our diversity in the face of this unprecedented danger, much like we came together in the face of the Axis powers of the Great War.

We now look back at those times and we have anointed the people of the 1940s as the Greatest Generation. Somehow Americans of the early Twenty-first Century must rise to an even higher level of greatness. If we fail to do so, the future that our grandchildren and great grandchildren will face will be a time of great suffering and tragedy and there will be no way for them to undo the damage we have done.