Montana Cowboys, Adam Smith, and Trump

American Thinker ^ | 24 Feb, 2025 | J.B. Shurk

[MtnClimber]

In writer Taylor Sheridan’s Western series, 1923, there is a great scene in the third episode (which I will paraphrase) when the show’s Montana cattle-ranching family rides into town and finds a man selling futuristic wares on the street. What’s that crazy thing? Well, ma’am, it’s a washing machine. And that? A refrigerator for keeping food cold. Oh, my. How do they work? They run on electricity through power lines straight into your home. They are modern conveniences that do your chores for you.

Amid the general euphoria among those seeing such strange inventions for the first time, one of the brash, young cowboys asks discerningly, “So you sell electricity, and then you rent all the things that need electricity?” The salesman reluctantly agrees but insists the new appliances will provide time for fun and leisure. “But that ain’t more leisurely,” the young cowboy replies, “because we gotta work more to pay for all this stuff.” The salesman quickly points out that every home in New York City will soon have all these technologies and more. The cowboy shakes his head in disgust and provides a fine lesson on economic freedom: “No, here’s the thing, we buy all this stuff, we’re not working for ourselves anymore. We’re working for you.”

I wish every American (especially the youngest generations) would watch that scene a hundred times and think clearly about its implications. What does it say about our way of life when most of us pay so many different kinds of recurring bills just to stay in our own homes? Property taxes, municipal fees, state taxes, federal taxes, water, electric, natural gas — all just to get started. Want to communicate with the outside world or enjoy some basic entertainment? Those services will require more subscription fees

[fidelis]

Speaking of cowboys, western writer Louis L’Amour frequently has one of his main characters opine that what brought about the fall of the Native Americans was not the soldier, or the cowboy, or the pioneer, but the traders that sold them rifles. Once they found out how efficient they were, for hunting and for warring, they had to have them. They then grew dependent on them and on the ammunition which they could only get from traders. As a result of this, their whole way of life was changed forcing them gradually into the ways of those who eventually supplanted them.

[Tucker39]

When I was very young my mother did laundry in a Maytag washer with a two-cycle engine. In rural York County, PA we didn’t get electricity until WWII ended. The REA came down our dirt road and hooked us up. We farmed with two teams of horses and a team of mules. Until then our radio was a big floor model Philco with a big battery in it that would last about a year. On that radio we heard Don McNeil’s Breafast Club in the mornings, soap operas like Stella Dallas or Portia Faces Life in the afternoons, and The Lone Ranger or The Great Gildersleeve or Fibber McGee & Molly at night. We also got a water pump and no longer had to carry every drop of water for cooking, bathing and laundry from the spring house 75 yards from the house. We got a refrigerator and a freezer, and a gas range that burned bottled gas; so the big old Columbian cookstove that burned wood or coal went bye-byes. Each room in the house got at least one light fixture with one light bulb, and the beautiful, elegant, ornate old Aladdin and/or Ray-O-Lite gas parlor lamps were discarded. But we got no inside plumbing for bathing or toilet use, and any hot water needed for cooking or bathing had to be heated on the gas range. And the outhouse remained until we moved to town in 1947. From then on, we were part of the modern world. And as children, we moved up from a one-room schoolhouse and brownbagging our lunch; to a consolidated elementary school with a cafeteria and restrooms. And then came a hand crank telephone on the wall, and we were LIVIN’! For whatever all that is worth.

[redfreedom]

My parents told similar stories growing up on their farms.

One of their stories that varies from yours is going to bed with headed rocks. My mom said the wash water in her bedroom would freeze at night. To keep warm they’d take rocks or bricks and heat them on the stove downstairs, then put them under the covers by their feet.

In the winter they tied a rope from the house to the barn so no one would get lost in a snow storm.

Imagine anyone living like that today!