Posted on 11/12/2011 10:16:03 PM PST by neverdem
A few paragraphs separated by nearly two centuries chart a downhill slalom from liberty to dependency. First, here’s Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Self-Reliance”: “The education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies;—though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.”
Then, on October 26, ABC News: “At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.” Actually, what the president said was this: in the event he was not reelected, “If you lose your job you’re on your own, if you get sick, you’re on your own.” It was the ABC writers and editors who took it upon themselves to introduce “self-reliance” as a pejorative.
The term was not always viewed that way, as Emerson’s lauding of self-sufficiency in his 1841 essay shows. The ensuing decade proved the value of Emerson’s economic and moral philosophy. Some examples:
None of these accomplishments would have been possible without the quality of individual autonomy. None of these history-makers was seeking a federal handout; none was looking for guarantees in the pursuit of unprecedented goals. In their slipstream would come a parade of individuals who owed their success to self-reliance—from Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh to John F. Kennedy, the Apollo astronauts, and those supremely independent garage-tinkerers, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. For them, as for most Americans, self-reliance was seen as a virtue, not a liability, a characteristic worth promoting, not denigrating.
In the new millennium, safety nets abound, from Social Security to unemployment insurance. But these entitlements are meant to reinforce individuality by giving U.S. citizens freedom from catastrophic financial worries. They are not meant to encourage the seeking of ever more handouts, ever more dependence on cash-strapped federal and state governments.
If the folks at ABC are ever to understand the country they fly over, they would be well advised to stop misreading speeches and get back to some basic American literature. They might start with the great Transcendentalist and abolitionist who knew all about the “wicked dollar” and how, left unchallenged, it could lead to economic and moral serfdom.
Stefan Kanfer, a contributing editor of City Journal and a former editor of Time, is the author, most recently, of Tough Without a Gun, a biography of Humphrey Bogart.
bump
Great, great column. Thanks for posting it.
Just about all American virtues have become pejoratives to the media / press / academia / etc.
Such a great post....ha....Bump for self-reliance and America!
I guess that I missed something about the Apollo Astronaughts- I was firmly convinced that the achievements of the astronaughts was probably one of the best examples of the result of a concentrated and coordinated team effort, involving NASA, the federal government, the combined efforts of the nation's academic community, a great number of the nation's civilian hi-tech corporations, as well as the taxpayers that paid for the effort.
Now, about John F. Kennedy- I assume that the appearance of living a SELF-RELIANT life is seemingly facilitated somewhat if you're born into one of the richest families in the country, if not the world, but the definition of SELF RELIANCE PRECLUDES any consideration of self-reliance, unless that individual was denied any of the family's finances, educational opportunities or other benefits that normally accrue to a scion of one of a nation's most wealthy and influential dynasties.
If you choose to believe that the Apollo space exploration project was an illustrative example of self reliance rather than one of the greatest team efforts since the Normandy Invasion, then you go right ahead. It’s a somewhat free country. I won’t even try to change your opinion.
You are indeed missing something. If not for the individualism of the astronauts, they would never have gotten to the position where they were capable and suited to become astronauts. It wasn't the government who made them enter flight school n their youth or struggle and achieve all of their goals up to and including the Apollo program.
Ping.
Preppers Ping!
Both were premier examples of American exceptionalism -- but it was the Astronauts who were mentioned as prime examples of self-reliance in the sentence being cited.
For a prime example of the ground team plus the resourceful individuals in space forming a "whole greater than the sum of the parts", there is no better example than the survival of the Apollo 13 crew...
The main thing was that none were there that didn’t want to be.
In my experience with talking with leftists, this concept of voluntary vs forced “cooperation” simply escapes them.
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