Taking the Lead

Stand For Something: The Battle for America's Soul
by John Kasich

"I don't know about you, but I'm troubled by a lot of what I see and hear in America's heartland..."

John Kasich calls it like he sees it. A former longtime U.S. congressman, a respected author and popular television host, Kasich has been around the neighborhood a few times. In his first book, Courage Is Contagious, he celebrated the under-the-radar accomplishments of ordinary people doing extraordinary things to change America. Now, in Stand for Something, he tackles-head-on-the erosion of long-standing, hard-earned values upon which our nation is built.

"Honesty, integrity, personal responsibility, faith, humility, accountability, compassion, forgiveness ... These are our American values, our common denominators ..."

Drawing on his childhood growing up in blue-collar McKees Rocks, PA, his college years, his Washington career, and his most recent turn in the private sector, Kasich reminds us of the fundamental principles that are our American legacy. In blunt, straight-shooting tones, he reveals new ways to hold our government officials accountable for their actions, and how to pressure sports figures to start living up to their role model status. He encourages us to have the gumption to be morally responsible business leaders who look beyond the bottom line, and shows us how courageous people of faith have helped transform their communities. He inspires parents to improve their children's schools, reminding us that our educational institutions need dollars and sense to compete on a global scale. And, saving the "best" for last, he takes on American popular culture, including the media, and asks us to use our wallets, the free press, and our own good judgment to protest all that is offensive in the current American way of life.

Leadership starts with you, Kasich tells us. "We all share the power to grow and change and reimagine the world," he writes. "If you see something happening that sets you off, rise up and do something about it."

John Kasich's book is a rallying cry for all Americans that will make us think and-most important-make us get out of our easy chairs and Stand for Something.

Chapter 1

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

Václav Havel

I don't know about you, but I'm troubled by a lot of what I see and hear in America's heartland. Every morning, it seems, I open the newspaper and read about some new scandal or outrage that sets me reeling. Government officials on the take. Public school teachers on the prowl. Professional athletes on the juice. Organized religion on the decline. Traditional nuclear families on the wane. And on and on. Even more troubling, it seems as though we can no longer trust what we read in the newspaper, or take in on the network or cable news programs, because the deceit and corruption have lately reached to the very institutions charged with watchdogging the public interest.

Of course, it doesn't stop at our institutions. It reaches into the very heart of our communities - the folks next door who sometimes appear wired in ways that have nothing to do with the fundamental values with which most of us were raised. Indeed, as I put the finishing touches to these pages, I'm struggling to make sense out of the latest piece of bad behavior to surface in America's backyard. And it's not just America's backyard; it's mine; it took place in a small town less than an hour from the small town where I grew up. Perhaps by the time you read this it will have blown over, but I have a feeling this one will linger in our national conscience for a good long while.

Here's what happened: A Tee-ball coach in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, was charged with offering one of his eight-year-old players $25 to hit a teammate in the face with a baseball in hopes that the targeted player - a mildly retarded autistic child - would be hurt badly enough to have to leave the game. See, in Uniontown as elsewhere, all Tee-ballers who show up for their team's games must play at least three innings, and the boy's coach thought this put his team at some kind of disadvantage. At first he thought it might be a good idea not to tell the player the time and place of the team's first playoff game, but when that didn't work he allegedly hit upon this plan to put the kid out of commission.

And the story gets worse. The coach's "assassin" missed his target on the first throw and merely hit the kid in the groin, but the boy's unsuspecting mother encouraged her son to shake it off and go right back onto the field, at which point a second ball hit him on the side of his face and ear, drawing blood and sending him to the sidelines. When I came across this headline, in June 2005, it struck me as just about the most unconscionable human act I could imagine - pure evil! - and yet upon reflection I feared it was emblematic of the win-at-all-costs, anything-goes mind-set that seems to have taken hold across this great land.

My goodness, our checks and balances are out of whack in this country, and our priorities so far out of line, that I sometimes have difficulty recognizing the world I'm living in. (Do you?) I set these thoughts to paper and catch myself wondering when halfhearted apologies started amounting to consequences; when law-abiding, God-fearing people began convincing themselves that shortcuts were the path to decency; and, when folks we'd always cast as role models started living down to their roles. Did I miss a memo? Was there a mass conference call, during which everyone agreed to toss aside traits like accountability and responsibility in favor of the attitude that justifies almost any action? Lord knows, I must have overlooked something, and at times I wonder where to look for the virtue I'm certain resides deep within us all. Like most people I know, I grew up believing that our principles were like currency, and that doing the right thing was the default option programmed into our hard drives, but these days those principles have so little to do with the heat and haste of our American way of life that you'd be hard-pressed to spot them at all in the stories behind each day's scandalous headlines.

When did this happen? And, more to the point, what can we do about it? Well, I have some ideas, and they're basic, and I mean to spend some time on them here. They reach back to this country's roots, on the theory that you've got to approach each problem at its foundation. Consider: America is a special place because of our Founders' vision. They believed that a nation could be built on the back of self-governance, that making laws didn't necessarily give us the solutions that free markets and conscience-driven individuals would also provide. They believed in the limits of government as much as they did in the power of government. And they believed that a free market economy and a limited government would be supported by our shared Judeo-Christian ethics to provide a fundamental sense of duty and conscience to all American citizens. Indeed, our moral foundation continues to flow from the shared values that have been passed down for generations, and these values are simple, straightforward, and widely held: honesty, integrity, personal responsibility, faith, humility, accountability, compassion, forgiveness. They're a part of us, whether or not we want to cop to them. What's wrong with America is that on a societal level we have swung away from these fundamental values in a kind of mass crisis of conscience - it's like a virus! - but it is up to each of us to change the tone and tenor of the country, to set right the moral pendulum in our own lives, and to swing that pendulum back in a more positive, more hopeful direction.

It is like a virus, and I'm afraid it's spreading. A mechanic is treated rudely and unprofessionally by a telephone agent representing one of his local utilities. Unable to receive satisfaction or even simple courtesy in the exchange, he gets off the phone in a surly mood, and finds that he is short-tempered with the next customer to appear in his garage. There's a cloud darkening his normally sunny disposition, and this next customer is unfortunately on the receiving end of it - and, also unfortunately, that next customer happens to be an emergency room physician's assistant at the local hospital, and the ill temper rubs off on him as well. And so it goes, spreading through our neighborhoods like a contagion.

Right now, the cultural indicators are stacked against us. Just look at the number of broken families - in your own neighborhood and across our country. Look at the sex and violence on television, and in our popular music, and in the video games that have become so much a part of our children's lives. Look at the number of corporate leaders under investigation, indictment, or conviction. Look at the suspect recruiting practices of college coaches, or the unbridled arrogance of professional athletes - on the field, in the locker room, and in their home communities. Look at the disturbing trend of politicians who genuinely hate each other because they wear different uniforms or hold opposing views. Look at the alarming rate of child abductions and domestic violence. Look at a system of public education that simply isn't working. Look at our disaffected student population, desperate for guidance and attention. Look at all these things and know that they exist because of a lack of leadership. That's what it comes down to, leadership, and once again it's basic. For the most part, our leaders have not been standing up for America or sounding any kind of alarm. Heck, most of them haven't been standing up at all, and this right here is the problem. For too long now, the folks who move and shake this country have been content to play the hands they've been dealt, instead of shuffling the cards and pulling for a better draw. The time has come and long gone for our leaders to rise and matter, to take a stand ... for something.

Copyright © 2006 by John Kasich

About the Author

John Kasich served nine terms in Congress representing Ohio and is the author of Courage Is Contagious, a New York Times bestseller. He currently hosts the weekly Heartland with John Kasich on the Fox News network and is a fill-in host for Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor.