We recently visited the Northwest. It was a perfect time of year. Aspen were dawning just as the snow was melting into the streams below. It’s a splendid countryside as bison graze and sleepy bears are occasionally seen in the distance.

“America the Beautiful” was playing on my audio-tour guide as I approached Mt. Rushmore for the first time. The four faces seemed to be looking out over our country. Tears wet my eyes as I yearned for solutions to the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. I listened to the voice telling me of the creation of this great monument- the obstacles that were overcome to complete it. And my heart longed for a leader-one such leader-to immerge from our concrete culture like one of the four depicted on the mountain.

The week before I’d told my thirty-something sons, “Don’t waste so much energy complaining about the state of our country. Do something. You live in the greatest country with the best government ever imagined.  Get involved in solutions.”  We may not be perfect but we surely are better than any nation mankind has fashioned up to now.

We are still a government  ‘for the people’ and ‘by the people.’ And each of us is one of ‘the people.’

At Mt. Rushmore it’s easy to ask, “What do you think of this statue?”

I wonder, “What would they think of us?”