Select Entry- Jeffery Day, Age 38

Welcome to our Optimistic Essay category. Here you will find the $1,000 winning contest essay, 5 finalist essays and 15 honorable mention essays and a growing list of hand-picked select essays that readers submitted during our "Why Are You Optimistic About the Future?" contest.

"Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to find a better world."

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Victorian England's Poet Laureate)

By the night of 9/11 millions of Americans were ready to profess that the vision of a new world order had proven to be a false dawn. Yet within eighteen months thereafter, America had committed herself to bringing liberty to lands that have never known it, and to protecting, through force of arms, the fruits of liberation in Afghanistan and Iraq -- thus setting in motion a great movement of freedom and democracy that has made despots around the world fear for their tomorrows.

In the meanness of our times, when the twilight of our nation's glory seems to be a growing concern among some of us, it is easy to surrender to counsels of despair. But ours is an age of unprecedented promise. Whenever confronted by crisis, America has always proven how imperishable is the dream of freedom. From her founding to the present day, her citizens have responded with irresistible resolve to perils greater than any that we face today. A simple glance at history presents an eloquent rebuttal to those who see in current events the eclipse of national greatness or an America unequal to the challenges of our time.

Let the facts speak for themselves:

At virtually no time during the American Revolution did a majority of colonists believe that Great Britain could be beaten. Yet the rebels defeated what was at the time the mightiest military power on Earth.

If the American Civil War were fought today, given our huge increase in population, proportional losses would exceed six million war dead. The nation survived the Civil War because of Lincoln's leadership and the People's indefeasible faith in the democratic experiment.

On December 8, 1941 Hitler's Nazi armies were less than twenty-five miles from Moscow. By then most of Europe lay under Germany's heel. But the wake-up call of Pearl Harbor sealed the fate of the Axis Powers as it inspired Americans to total victory in the Second World War.

Out of each of these conflicts emerged an America stronger and freer and more prosperous than before. After World War II, America faced down the Soviet peril -- until that day when European communism exhausted itself in its vacuum of hatred and its attempt to dominate the world.

In her war on terror the United States to date has emasculated the leadership of Al Qaeda, toppled a genocidal dictator, liberated fifty million people, and prevented a recurrence of another 9/11-type attack on American soil.

America's universities and scientists have been as instrumental in the medical field elevating the human condition as her military has in victories in the field of sorely-needed political reformation. The Genome Project and other breakthroughs, largely or in part the achievements of American efforts, have opened vast new vistas to enriched health.

From agricultural productivity to treatment of mental disorders there have and will continue to be improvements brought on by advances in biotechnology. Currently, life expectancy in the United States is over 77 years -- almost twice as high as a century ago. Many leading experts predict that it will be well past 80 years by the second quarter of this century.

While the overwhelming preponderance of advances in human health in all of human history have taken place in the past one hundred years, it is reasonable to believe that the greatest advances lie ahead. In the United States, in the Twentieth Century, the infant mortality rate fell by over ninety per cent. Worldwide it fell by sixty per cent. In the same period, global gross domestic product nearly quintupled. In the past thirty years alone, the world has grown less poor, less unhealthy, and less hungry. With the spread of democracy in Central America, South America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, the world has grown freer than ever before.

In reflecting on America's past and anticipating her future, Abraham Lincoln warned his countrymen that they could "only nobly win or meanly loose this last best hope of earth." In my own reflections I am reminded of the words of the Prophet Joel, "Young men shall have visions and old men shall have dreams."

America was founded by people driven by a bold vision and inspired by a brave dream. In this new century we should welcome the challenges of our time as spurs to a better tomorrow, and remember that with hope in our hearts we can accomplish the task before us. As countrymen, ours is a fellowship whose dreams are truly brave; for over two hundred years that has been our fate and our lodestar -- and it must and will continue to be.