The economic crisis looming over the country has led to many problems but few actual solutions. The first bailout attempt aimed at specific monetary institutions failed in the House of Representatives even after bipartisan efforts to draft the legislation. If I know anything about Republicans I’d bet that they’d prefer a laissez-faire approach to the economy (let the prospectors and hacks come rolling in). If these representatives have to spend any amount of money to solve the problem they’ll panic; it’s as if they believe these issues will sort themselves out and the government should be absolved of any responsibility.
The root of this reluctance to sacrifice one’s own interests for the sake of national prosperity is difficult to pinpoint. In modern times though, the impetus for such thinking is grounded in Reaganism and neo-conservatism. These philosophies embrace individual initiative and unregulated markets as the sole means by which personal success can be realized. This rightist mode of thinking derides any attempt by the national government to monitor the markets, or to create programs that tax the wealthy in order to benefit a larger number of people. America, Reagan’s apostles declare, was founded upon the principle of individual liberty and pursuit of happiness. These people contend that the free market is a just judge (and often executioner).
Unfortunately, those who think in this way fail to note the fact that very little in America is accomplished by individual initiative. From the Revolutionary War to the New Deal, during the World Wars and the Civil Rights Movement, collectivism has effected profound change in our country. Alexis de Tocqueville, during his travels in America, noted the extreme degree to which associations are formed in this country in order to get things done.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Cannonshop
From the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. " That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
"that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.." Okay, what part of that do you have a problem with? That perhaps, (just perhaps) Conservatives aren't inclined to go with the idea of the Mobus Populi voting themselves Bread And Circuses at the expense of their neighbours?
Liberals tend to confuse "The good of the Country" with "What makes ME feel good and superior".
This tends to include inventing "Injustices" to rectify with equally shaky solutions, and addressing all problems with the panacea of spending other-people's-money, most often collected at gunpoint (both literally and figuratively) from others whom are less fashionable, less organized, and less likely to resist.
2 - Clavos
When I was in college (back in the dark ages), we were taught that sweeping generalizations totally unsubstantiated by facts were the hallmarks of sloppy, lazy scholarship.
Apparently, the standards have been lowered.
3 - Cannonshop
But...They're FUN, Clavos! (okay, I'll be good and try to drop the sweeping generalizations...)
On specifics. Sentence as follows:
"These people contend that the free market is a just judge (and often executioner)."
It is a just executioner-when it is allowed to carry out sentence. The 700billion dollar Bailout is about ass-covering for the collectivists in D.C. as much as it is about socializing the risks taken by Wall Street's addiction to toxic investments. Had the Market been allowed to justly execute the educated idiots who got us into this mess, the temporary dislocation would have been short, and put paid to a lot of corporate and financial corruption. As it is, I expect we'll see a repeat in around ten years, only BIGGER.
4 - Lisa Solod Warren
Clav, I think you are confused. "Liberals" tend to see that the good of the country means the good of everyone. That it is not just a feel good solution, but that a solution that involves leaving some people behind in poverty and despair just because they were unlucky enough to be born into such isn't quite fair.
I guess I just have a different sense of justice. My father is a first generation American, born to dirt poor Russian peasant immigrants. He fought in World War II and went to college on the GI Bill. His father died when he was in college and he spent the rest of his life supporting his completely uneducated but tough and determined mother who had taken care of HER old and sick father all of her life and had raised six brothers and sisters after her mother died. He also raised my sisters and me to be good and responsible citizens and to pay our taxes and pay our way. I remember when he was in the 50 percent bracket (when such a thing existed) and he said "If I make enough money to pay that much in taxes, then I make enough." He taught us to pay in cash, to always give something to charity, to take care of others, and to be responsible. I have lived my life that way. And no matter how well he did, he was and still is, a Democrat. He never believed in unions (when he owned his own factory) because he took care of his workers, even paying for them to learn how to read and write. They were loyal to a fault and worked for him for 20 and 30 years. When he sold and retired, he rewarded all of them. I believe in unions when necessary, when people do NOT take care of their workers, ie., when they aren't like my father. He lived and believed in the American dream, but too many don't operate that way. Maybe that is why you call me such a Pollyanna. But I learned by example.
I also know, however, that I grew up lucky, with the chance for an education, in a decent home, with food and warmth and enough money for clothes and extras. As my parents did better, we had better vacations. They taught us about art and music. THere were books in the house. They cared about people and giving back. I learned those things at their knee. I was fortunate. So many are not. So because of the luck of genes and parents I feel the need to make a difference and not just be a selfish person and try to get my own and damn the rest of the world. That, to me, is what being a liberal, and an American means. And that is what paying taxes for health care and education and social services means.
And if it means raising taxes so that all benefit I am okay with that. And if it means that those who are super rich pay more and that those who are super poor are not so poor and that the middle class is a little bit larger and a little bit better educated and better off, then so be it.
I don't want our country looking like Venezuela or Brazil where I have traveled extensively and lived for several months and where the difference between the rich and poor is huge and there is a very small middle class.
5 - Clavos
Cannon,
My comment was directed at the OP, not you, Sorry for the confusion.
6 - Cannonshop
#5 Yeah, but Clavos, I was doing it TOO. Not as smoothly as Mr. Ford, mind, but definitely doing the same thing.(I merely have the rather awkward class to admit it.)
7 - troll
Cole says: ...individual liberty...should not be the only precept considered when the country faces a time of tribulation.
after experiencing the results of Kennedy's 'call to action' whenever this '4th of July' bit starts to rear its ugly head as a sign of the times I wonder: who do They want me to shoot now - ?
nothing that politicians say about what the 'country' needs can absolve me from the personal responsibility that comes with individual liberty
...and Cole - not to worry
as they say on Wall Street these days: we are all socialists now...the politicians and their handlers will be requiring sacrifices to satisfy the most flagellant among us you betcha
(this might even take the form of being forced to buy more shit at Big Boxes...the horror...the horror)
8 - Ruvy
Lisa,
He never believed in unions (when he owned his own factory) because he took care of his workers, even paying for them to learn how to read and write. They were loyal to a fault and worked for him for 20 and 30 years. When he sold and retired, he rewarded all of them....
Whatever your father believed in or didn't believe in, he was a tzaddík, a truly righteous man. You do not need to hear that from me - indeed I suspect you would rather not. But you did a mitzvá of a high order to talk of him so, and someone - you never know where - might read what you wrote about him and follow his example. If more people were like this, the world would be such a better place.
9 - moon
The US culture is one of INDIVIDUALISM.
It's been promoted in everything from Marlboro cigarette ads to union-busting to refusal to cionsider universal health care.
It's Social Darwinism at its most savage.
Why would anyone in his or her right or wrong mind expect a society to change its very cornerstone?
When all those individuals start getting tired on living in rusted-out Barracudas and eating catshow, maybe there will be some small move towards community.
Until then, nothing.
10 - Baronius
Lisa, great story. I've got one of those dads myself.
11 - Lisa Solod Warren
Ruvy, thanks. Baronius, you, too. But I think there are more than two of you, and more than three of us. Whatever Moon says about our culture, it is not just one of individualism and it is not that easy to divide and conquer us.
Too many of us want to do the right thing and the right thing means taking care of each other, no matter what some of us may think. And that means a sense of social responsibility, not grabbing whatever you can. The Jews believe this life we get is it (Ruvy, God love you, I am not getting into a theological discussion with you here)...and we aren't good in order to get some reward of heaven. How we live determines what stories people tell of us and how they remember us. Or if we are remembered at all. Some of us, unfortunately, will be just a waste of space, a wasted life. Truly dust to dust with not even a moment of us left in memory. THAT is the tragedy of greed and selfishness, of meanness and ignorance and cruelty.... that and being thought of, if we are even thought of at all (apparently, according to a report I heard on NPR today, scientists have just discovered --a la Eternal Sunshine--how to permanently erase bad memories without destorying the mind!).
I have noticed neither Cannon nor Clav have responded to my post. I suppose Clav's silence comes under his self-imposed edict not to pick on me, because I suspect no response from him could be made without sarcasm. Which itself speaks volumes.
12 - moon
Lisa,
Rather than finding another way to call me a liar, why not refute my claim?
Show me some evidence of US culture not being a culture of individualism.
Examples, Lisa, not rhetoric that flies off into the Hebraic heavens would be highly appropriate to post here.
Don't tell me the archetype of the Rugged Individualist went in the toilet along with the stock market??!!
13 - Dr Dreadful
Lisa,
Clav's silence probably has more to do with the fact that he's at sea for a couple of days, and out of wireless contact.
14 - moon
I see BC is just as incestuous as it was when I used to post here.
15 - Baronius
Lisa (and Cole), just consider the possibility that Reaganites are selfless people who do their best to help others, only without government involvement.
16 - Dave Nalle
I have to agree with Moon here. The US has been a culture of individualism. Let's hope we can keep it that way.
Dave
17 - Lisa Solod Warren
I just heard an interesting bit of old radio from 1948 when Reagan was a Democrat. He was talking about Republicans being selfish, taking profits when ordinary Americans were having to go back to work at 91! because Social Security couldn't support them, how children's milk programs in schools were being discontinued, how Standard oil was taking record profits when citizens could save little more than a dollar a week. He asked Americans to support Hubert Humphrey and Herbert Hoover. It was fascinating....
Moon, I have no desire to argue with you. One can be an individual and still care about community. They do not necessarily cancel each other out. You are incredibly prickly and imnpossible to discuss things with. You clearly hate America and Americans, which is fine. I have no problem with that. You choose to live in another country. But why waste your time hurling epithets at us Gringos? Does it make you feel better to belittle us? You, like several others on this list, seem angry all the time. I find that sad and self-defeating and I won't engage. It's useless.
I have no desire to get into fights with you or anyone else about my faith or my religion; nor will I defend it. I chose, once, to ignore your ugly remarks and I will do so again. This time, all I asked for was proof that absentee ballots were tossed. If you don't wish to show that, fine; then I don't wish to believe your claim.
18 - Cannonshop
Too many of us want to do the right thing and the right thing means taking care of each other, no matter what some of us may think. And that means a sense of social responsibility, not grabbing whatever you can.
Lisa, why then do you support the idea of doing exactly THAT?
Let me try to explain...
(give me a minute, it's that long silence thing...)
Okay, here goes.
There are people who game the system every chance they get-I know some of these people, they are (unfortunately) among my relatives. While "I" have a moral obligation to give them help if they REALLY need it, you don't.
I don't have the right to demand that you help, for instance, my drunken cousin with the gambling problem to buy a new house to replace the one he burned down because he couldn't stay sober long enough to put the goddamned cigarette out.
When Government is given the responsibility to take care of people, that's EXACTLY what it means-that while you have no moral obligation to my family, you're going to be compelled (with the force of guns and such-tax protesters die violent, government-sponsored deaths if they push too hard or get too noisy) to help that shitbag whether you want to or not, even if it isn't right to help him because his issues are entirely his own doing.
I have other examples- two half-brothers in Portland, both high school drop-outs, slackers, worthless to themselves and everyone else. If one of them gets into serious trouble, I'm morally obligated to help them to the extent of my abilities to get out of it. YOU are not. BUT...
in a Collective system, YOU, Clavos, Doc, Likely Mister Ford, and everyone you know is suddenly obligated to come help them. This is wrong. If you offer help, it's voluntary, admirable, and right. If you're FORCED, then it's just what it says-Forced.
Coercion is wrong, Lisa. If one must be coerced by the state to aid others, that aid is tainted, and likely will not provide real, honest, and lasting help.
By nature, the State is a Coercive power-it has some roles it must play, but coercion for morality isn't a good idea, it smacks of an Official State Faith.
It also creates something else: "Doing the minimum required" instead of "What must be done to help". There's a difference there, too. It gives the selfish a minimum of compliance that they can then walk away when more is needed than they are willing to give...and when it's coerced, that willingness dries up.
19 - Cannonshop
To put it more simply, Lisa (and this is why I really SHOULD just review before posting...)
If you give people a Quota, they will meet the quota and that is all. All those kids today that are doing their ninety hours of community service to graduate? unless they get busted for something minor, that's all the service you'll ever see from most of them. EVER AGAIN.
When you have a forced minimum, you get the minimum-minimum investment, minimum effort, maximum waste and screwing off.
20 - Lisa Solod Warren
Thanks for your comment, Cannon. But I am not talking about a COLLECTIVE system. I am talking about a compassionate system. There will always be people who game the system. THere will always be slackers, idiots, wastrals, criminals. You can't change that. But mostly, people will be good and do good. I think that is true. THAT is why we need social security, public schools, a fair tax code, health care for all. I am not talking about constantly giving money to gamers. I am not talking about minimum effort. I am talking about the expectation of giving back that sets up an expectation that keeps on setting up an expectation.... and that, I think, is what works in the long run. It's just a disagreement of basic human character, I guess.
21 - Cannonshop
#20 Lisa, "Compassion" in the System is like building a "Compassionate" machine-gun. It either won't work, or it won't work well.
"Systems" don't have compassion, they have Rules. PEOPLE have Compassion. Systems eliminate the good in people far more often than they remove the bad.
Public Schools-we have 'em, and they turn out ignorance by the bucketload. The worst are almost ALWAYS in places where those running them have a lot of "System" involved.
Social Security: a Pyramid scheme, it can't be solvent unless the economy is in perpetual growth in terms of wages and jobs, AND the recipients die before they've collected too much.
The Tax Code: Written to serve the interests of those who own the Congressmen-which isn't the Electorate. Eighteen thousand pages of tax-exemptions, loopholes, and escape clauses that protect the richest of old-money rich and soak the rest of us, this "Fair" system is so well constructed the people tasked to enforce it don't know all the rules. It lives and exists by extorting the middle to buy the votes of the bottom while exempting the top, and has done so for most of living memory.
The U.S. interstate highways, the Jet Age, the entire cold-war buildup prior to about 1965, were all accomplished on an average tax of around 3%. The national average right now is around 15%, the highways are crumbling, education is a mess...get the picture?
All hasn't been well-for most of MY LIFE, Lisa. Clinton's "Middle Class Tax Cut" never materialized, but family farms evaporated, housing prices went up, fuel prices up, food prices up, wages stagnant and not just in raw numbers-they've been declining in purchasing power my entire existence. Meanwhile, those lucky souls with "civil service" jobs seem bulletproof to the economy, prospering while the rest of us are getting screwed, immune to layoffs and with guaranteed raises. The experience I've had indicates they don't even have to do their damn jobs, much less do them well.
"Compassion" in the system bloats the Bureaucracy at the expense of those who aren't at the top, or at the very bottom. Bureaucracy is essentially immune. They are neither answerable, nor accountable, don't have to actually do their jobs, and rarely (outside of intensely physical fields like Police, military and firemen) have an ethic of excellence or craftsmanship.
And THAT is who's gaming the system the most, Lisa. Teachers who can't teach, mid-level Bureaucrats whose sole purpose is to spend money on new furniture while begging for bigger budgets, the assholes at the DMV, and countless generators of new, improved, illegible forms to obtain permission for a form to get permission for another form. Countless megatons of dead weight, Lisa, like zombies eating the brain of the country. Why? because of a host of things, but the main points are that "Systems" can't be compassionate, they're only machines. PEOPLE are compassionate, but they tend to dodge responsibility whenever they can.
"None of us, is as stupid and destructive as All of us"
"Teamwork-Pass the Buck to get ahead".
"Deflect Blame"
"Deny Everything, Admit Nothing, Make Counter-Accusations".
These are the TRUE ethics of Bureaucracy, and the more "compassionate" your intent, the more these come into play in the coercive nature of Government.
Concentration of Power erodes Morality, it erodes Ethics, it erodes Standards. Power, as in Political or Economic power, attracts the Corrupt, and corrupts whomever holds it. The more power, the more corruption. The more Corruption, the LESS "compassionate" your State-sponsored "Compassion" becomes, and the more "by rote" it becomes as well.
as the man said, "A government that can give you everything you need, will take everything you HAVE."
22 - Clavos
Careful Cannon - you're making too much sense for one of these threads...
23 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Cannon,I agree with you 100%!!
I think it's the ideas from people like the author that promote socialism.
Come on, we are now bailing out useless companies like FORD with our taxes. Why? Because, we feel a need to be compassionate to a company that cannot compete? A company who has taken advantage of the consumer with a crappy product?
I can't say it any better:
It is a just executioner-when it is allowed to carry out sentence. The 700billion dollar Bailout is about ass-covering for the collectivists in D.C. as much as it is about socializing the risks taken by Wall Street's addiction to toxic investments. Had the Market been allowed to justly execute the educated idiots who got us into this mess, the temporary dislocation would have been short, and put paid to a lot of corporate and financial corruption. As it is, I expect we'll see a repeat in around ten years, only BIGGER.
24 - Dave Nalle
Lisa, the 'expectation of giving back' which you describe cannot be established in the hearts of the people by government, because the assumption is that whatever comes from government is something you are entitled to and which you have paid for with your taxes and which does not require you to pass it on in any way.
I'm heavily involved in a variety of community service work. I drag my kids along to help whenever I can. As a result they seem to have intuitively grasped that as part of a community that sort of work is just something which you do. I'm fairly confident they will continue to follow that model in the future and pass it on to the next generation as well.
This is an approach which works. As Cannon pointed out, forced participation through a school requirement is just seen as a tedious chore and doesn't teach the idea of duty to community. You'd be better off having the kids read Aurelius' Meditations. Probably 1 in 10 of them would actually understand it and respond appropriately, which would be better than 10/10 getting the negative message that service is a tedious makework chore imposed by the state, most often as punishment.
Dave
25 - Lisa Solod Warren
You know, Cannon, I actually disagree with very little of what you said, only I don't think the Republicans will do anything about what you said.
What I think is that we need a fair, simple, low tax code for the middle class, a higher fair simple tax code for those who make more.
I think we need to completely reform education (you have read what I said before and both you and Clav agreed with it).
I DO think we need mandatory public service, sort of like we used to have a mandatory draft:)
I think we need to get rid of lobbyists, put in term limits, and put a cap on campaign spending.
I think we need an energy program with the vision of our moon program and the money to go along with it.
I also think that the Repubs will do none of that and that Obama might just have the vision to put some of that into place.
I HATE and did NOT SUPORT and DO NOT SUPPORT the bailout and wish Obama did not vote for it, but both and he and McCain did. I think most of it is the fault of the past 8 years and also the fault of the past 16 years of a Republican congress. I think Clinton added to the problems.
I think our country has been greedy and selfish pretty much down to the man(and woman) and I think we are mostly all responsible and we all have to change.... and if that sounds "socialistic" so be it.
I think we can have a free market that is also socially and morally responsible.
I think we need to get out of this "war" we never should have gotten into and set an example for the world in diplomacy.
I think we need to rethink how to solve the terrorism crisis and completely rethink the Middle East problem.
I think we need to do more in Africa as a world problem.
None of those things are on the Republican agenda.
So...... screw Marxist fears and all that jazz.
Responsibility begins at the bottom and the top at the same time. Only Obama seems to get this.