WASHINGTON WATCH: AFTER THE WALL CAME DOWN: AMERICA FACES ITS ELECTION RESPONSIBILITIES

For 28 tense years the Wall stood as symbol of the Cold War. On one side: the vibrant colors of democracy, capitalism and freedom. On the other: the ashen grays of totalitarian communism. Five years ago today the Wall began tumbling down. As the blue-jeaned youths in East and West Berlin hammered to break a hole in the forbidding concrete, the end of the Cold War came into sight. Capitalism, democracy and freedom had won.

How long ago that seems.

America won the Cold War, but our sense of triumph was short-lived. Without a foreign enemy to battle, we have been forced to confront our own faults. Economically strong, we find ourselves spiritually weak. Nothing more harshly symbolizes this fracture than the mother in South Carolina, raised in a comfortable middle-class home, who drowns her own two sons. Could the Russians have done anything worse.

I do not mean to belittle the fall of the Berlin Wall. I have a piece of that wall, chiseled off with rock and screwdriver, that I cherish as a memorial to the courage and generosity of Americans before me. Thanks to their sacrifice, Europe is free today and America stands secure from foreign threat. But past valor sustains the future for only so long. And as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin warned, the West's demise will come first from within.

We witness the seeds of America's end in today's high-profile tragedies: a mother killing her own children, children killing their parents, a husband killing his wife. But the problem is more pervasive and not always so showy. The decline of moral and ethical standards -- from Main Street to the White House -- is the single greatest threat to the future of the United States.

America was founded on personal responsibility, where citizens accepted the consequences of their actions. In return, they were given freedom. But today, too many people shun personal responsibility and think those who are irresponsible or foolish should be subsidized by others. In conjunction, honesty, truth and justice have been diminished, and freedom is threatened.

Grappling with these challenges is America's new Cold War. It is perhaps a more daunting task than the original.

Citizens with a sense of history will go to the polls today. Voting is the mechanism of democracy, without which government comes to ignore the people and to privilege itself. But good citizens will do more. They will renew their pledge to a purpose greater than government. At the turn of the century, William James wrote about democracy: "There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest good which we can see." That task begins with oneself and at home.

Jon K. Rust is a Washington-based writer for the Southeast Missourian.