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On this date in 1921 The World Series was broadcast on radio for the first time. In 1947 President Harry S. Truman delivered the first televised address from the White House.

And Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, was born on this day in 1903. He started his first McDonald's in Chicago in 1955 and when he died January 15, 1984 the chain ad 7,500 outlets in the United States and 31 other countries and territories. The total systemwide sales of its restaurants were more than $8 billion in 1983.

What made Mr. Kroc so successful was the variety of virtuoso refinements he brought to fast-food retailing. He carefully chose the recipients of his McDonald's franchises, seeking managers who were skilled at personal relations; he relentlessly stressed quality, banning from his hamburgers such filler materials as soybeans.

Mr. Kroc also made extensive, innovative use of part-time teen-age help; he struggled to keep operating costs down to make McDonald's perennially low prices possible, and he applied complex team techniques to food perparation that were reminiscent of professional football.

"I guess to be an entrepreneur you have to have a large ego, enormous pride and an ability to inspire others to follow your lead," he once said.

But his leadership entailed a wish that his followers be, like him, driven by an unending urge to build and to excel.

"Some people reach their level of expectations pretty quickly," he once observed. "We want someone who will get totally involved in the business. If his ambition is to reach the point where he can play golf four days a week or play gin rummy for a cent a point, instead of a tenth, we don't want him in a McDonald's restaurant."

Understandably, many McDonald's executives decorated their offices with scrolls inscribed with his favorite inspirational dictum:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

I think Ray Kroc would have agreed with this:

American conservatism is only successful when it’s in tension — when the ambition of its creeds is retrained by the caution of its Burkean roots. David Brooks

So in today's world of rapidly changing technology and innovation, the new economy that is driving the stock market to record highs and giving a handfull of people the power to terrify the world, what do we do?

We can each only do the little that is possible today to move in the direction of our dreams and trust that with God's help it is enough. Let's get started!