Americans are a resilient people. We persevere through difficult circumstances and arrive triumphant on the other side of adversity. It’s in our national DNA.
Once again, Americans are rising to the challenge before us. Medical professionals are meeting the call of duty and tending to our sick at great personal risk. Grocery stores, takeout restaurants and pharmacies remain open as Americans show up for work to give the rest of us access to essential goods. Families are working to overcome the tremendous economic damage they face as a result of the coronavirus.
Though I believe resilience is one of the defining traits of an American, I also believe it’s been absent from our public policy for too long. And this has become devastatingly clear in the current crisis.
Over the past several decades, our nation’s political and economic leaders, Democratic and Republican, made choices about how to structure our society — choosing to prize economic efficiency over resiliency, financial gains over Main Street investment, individual enrichment over the common good.
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