As we enter a new century and a new millennium, just about every American is asking, "Where are we headed? What is our mood? What are our hopes? What are our fears? And in what ways are we going to change our thinking, our values, and our behavior?"

I have an answer of my own to those questions, and this seems the perfect occasion to share that answer with you, my fellow members of the Masonic Order.*

What I think we're in the mood for is a new age of heroism, a time in our history when the classic heroic ideals once again start to make sense to us. Heroic ideals include both energy and self-restraint. Obviously, the hero is expected to be a person used to making an enormous effort. But just because the hero is trying so hard, the hero is at risk of making a bad mistake because energy, when it is pointed in the wrong direction, does much more damage than would passivity and a willingness to sit still.

That's the point at which Western thinking and Western literature got started. The Iliad is a story about a hero who made the mistaken decision to withdraw from the battle that involved all of his fellow heroes. This epic poem is a tragedy because, as a result of his decision, Achilles saw his dearest friend killed by the enemy and then proceeded to take vengeance at such a level that he became a kind of Angel of Death.

In the Bible, too, failures of heroism make up much of the narrative. King David, for example, made it his life's purpose to establish nothing less than a society whose military security would enable it to do God's will. But the power he achieved in this process obviously went to his head. He seduced another man's wife and then conspired to see to it that her husband died in battle, something that was much easier for him to do because her husband belonged to an ethnic group other than his own. And for this behavior, David in the Bible, like Achilles in the Iliad, paid a serious price.

For us as Americans, the challenge of heroism is most obviously represented by George Washington, the general who led us to victory over Great Britain and the president who enabled us to launch our unique experiment in self-government. Washington's reputation has gone through several phases as America developed. When there were Americans who still remembered Washington personally, he was the saint of the American Revolution. Later, as Americans struggled to become more sophisticated in their thinking, Washington often became a figure to made fun of. He was so stiff, so unyielding—such an incarnation of pure virtue—that it was hard not to look for feet of clay at the base of his monumental stature. Slowly but surely, Americans became disenchanted by the Virginia farmer and landowner who risked every pound and shilling under his control in order to help his fellow countrymen become independent of their colonial overlord.

Then, as the 20th century progressed, we became aware of just how bleak life can become when we turn our backs on heroism. We learned some lessons, above all, from our colossal involvement in the Second World War, when heroic energy and heroic self-restraint were qualities needed on a daily basis. Then, in the later 20th century, we learned some additional lessons from the various "revolutionary" movements that got some Americans in conflict and collision with other Americans.
When that happened, energy often overcame self-restraint, and when all the resulting explosions had taken place, we discovered we weren't particularly happy. Suddenly, the balance of a George Washington—the gigantic energy of military triumph followed by the self-restraint of an equally great civilian role—started to look very attractive. Washington again became a role model for American heroism and returned to the position of a national symbol, the kind of leader whose every motion is studied as an indicator of what America can become.

As we rediscover Washington's heroic virtues, we see the balance he epitomizes as essential to a sane and productive society. Important as they are, battles are not everything. We can be heroes all the time without being warriors all the time. And we can learn the greatest lessons not just from eminent philosophers but from the enormous act of faith that Washington and the Founding Fathers committed themselves to when they gave birth to the freest nation our planet has ever seen!

Freemasonry has always taught the ideals Washington lived by—a commitment to courage and balance as well as a reliance on education and faith. In today's renewed quest for values, these principles and the men who follow them will be the heroes of the new millennium.