It Shouldn't Be Hard to Be Humble

Lawrence Reed, president of FEE, delivers an excellent commencment address at Northwood University in Midland, Michigan on December 13th, 2008, regarding the "crisis of character" at the root of our liberty and economic crises in America. It is a great talk. The transcript and video can be found here at the Foundation for Economic Education website. The introduction:

More often than not, commencement addresses are light and aimed at puffing up the crowd, especially the graduates. But I want to focus on some serious business. We are a country in crisis, and I’m not referring to the economic situation, the stock market, crime, education, or any other problem that dominates the headlines. In fact, the crisis I’m most worried about is the main reason we have all those other problems. Fix this one thing and the rest of our problems would shrink to comparative insignificance. I refer to the crisis of character.