The Willingness to Work for Solutionsby Newt Gingrich

有心求解最重要The Willingness to Work for Solutions

80年代末、90年代初，美國國會議長Newt Gingrich 幾乎不可一世。他向戴明博士學習：家教約30小時。約1997年，他也有「醜聞」，被美國人民唾棄。真妙，他這兩年又再一次掘起，勢如破竹，連敵對的民主黨都佩服。

我沒太多功夫去研究他。不過，他剛剛在NPR（美國公共收音廣播網）發表他的信仰、人生觀。

我將末段意思列出當大家參考。

The Willingness to Work for Solutions

by Newt Gingrich

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4717148

All Things Considered, June 27, 2005 · I believe that the world is inherently a very dangerous place, and that things that are now very good can go bad very quickly.

I stood recently at Checkpoint Charlie and I saw where the Berlin Wall had once been, where millions had lived in slavery only 20 years ago and I realized that it could happen again. I've stood at Auschwitz, where millions were massacred. Then I read about in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands are dying in the Sudan.

I watch the bombings in Baghdad and I know they could be happening in Atlanta or in Washington. I look at civilizations that have collapsed: Rome, Greece, China, the Aztecs, the Mayas. And then I look around at our pretensions and our beliefs -- that we are somehow permanent -- and I am reminded that it is the quality of leaders, the courage of a people, the ability to solve problems that enables us to continue for one more year, and then one more year, until our children and our grandchildren have had this freedom, this safety, this health and this prosperity.

I learned this belief from my stepfather, a career soldier who served America in the second World War, in Korea and in Vietnam. When I was a child, we lived in France -- a France that was still suffering from World War II bomb damage; a France that still had amputees from the first World War and special seats on the subway for those who had been wounded in the first and second World Wars; a France that was fighting a war in Algiers; a France that had 100 percent inflation.

We went to the battlefield of Verdun, the greatest battle of the first World War. We stayed with a friend of my father's who had been drafted, sent to the Philippines, served in the Bataan Death March and spoke of three and a half years in a Japanese prison camp.

And suddenly, as a young man, I realized this is all real: The gap between our civilization, our prosperity, our freedoms and all of those things is the quality of our leaders, the courage of our people, the willingness to face facts and the willingness to work for solutions -- solutions to energy, solutions to the environment, solutions to the economy, solutions to education and solutions to national security. We have real challenges, we have a wonderful country. We need to keep it, and to keep it we're going to have to learn these kinds of lessons.

那時我還年輕，卻能頓時體會到：所有這些，都是真的: 在我們的文明、我們的繁榮、我們的自由，它們與上述所有這些衰敗之間之所以會有差距，乃繫於我們的領導者的品質，我們人民的勇氣，願意面對種種該正視的事實，以及願意努力尋求解答—不管在尋求能源方面的解決辦法、環境的解法、經濟困局的解法、教育體系的解法，以及國家安全上的解法。我們的許多挑戰，無疑都是真實的，然而吾國也很了不起。我們需要讓它萬世繁榮，而要做得到這，我們必須學會這些不同的教訓。