Posted on 07/27/2006 4:28:38 AM PDT by Tolik
We Americans don't seem to worry that we owe billions of dollars to the Chinese, or that our oil hunger is enriching hostile rogue regimes, or that our annual budget deficit keeps adding to our national debt.
Why fret now? For nearly a quarter-century, Americans have come to expect the good life. Unemployment should never go above 5 percent. Interest rates are expected to be always around the same low percentages, inflation even lower - and all this accompanied by steady growth in the economy and expanding government entitlements. Double-digit rates of interest, unemployment and inflation - the stagflation that characterized the Nixon and Carter administrations - are apparently ancient history.
Along with the amazing performance of the post Cold-War economy, technology has made the basics of life far more enjoyable - cell phones, the Internet, high-definition cable television, iPods and the like. The entrance of 2 billion workers in China and India into the global capitalist system, along with easy credit, makes material goods more accessible to the consumer than ever.
Luxury is now available to the middle class. Magazines are devoted to remodeling kitchens with granite tops and tony stainless steel appliances. Suburban tract houses often have both hot tubs and gardeners. Garages now appear in new developments with not one but two garage doors - and on occasion three or even four.
What are the consequences of this affluence?
For starters, a certain lack of appreciation of our bounty. No one praises Reagan, Clinton or Bush for the past amazing performance of the U.S. economy. Instead, it's taken as America's new birthright.
We expect almost instantaneous success in everything we do. Most in the media are thus tired of the present wars in the Middle East and think the enormous human cost is not worth the goal of offering freedom to millions, even though we have suffered far fewer fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan than a generation sacrificed in Vietnam.
As we near the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, most have forgotten the dangers of a terrorist attack. Often the public appears to worry more over the Patriot Act and wiretaps, as if our own leaders pose a greater threat to the United States than do mass-murdering Islamist terrorists.
But could our good life really sometime come to an end - as the histories of past affluent societies suggest it will? Imagine al-Qaida attacking the New York Stock Exchange or an unexpected North Korean missile taking out a West Coast city. What if Beijing suddenly had to sell off billions of its accumulated American dollars? Or how about a good old 1970s-style recession in which interest rates hit 20 percent, with inflation and unemployment each hovering near 10 percent? What would millions of younger Americans do - people who have known only the prosperity, material surfeit and mostly peace and security of the 1980s and 1990s?
Prosperity can also be deceiving. Many Americans, despite superficial affluence, are in debt and often a paycheck away from insolvency. By historical standards, they are pretty helpless. Most of us can't grow our own food, don't know how cars work and have no clue where or how electricity is generated. In short, few have the smarts to survive if the thin veneer of civilization were to be lost, as it has been from time to time in places like downtown New Orleans.
Think back to the Roman era of the "Five Good Emperors" - between A.D. 96-180 under the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonious Pius and Marcus Aurelius - when all problems of the turbulent past at last seemed to have been solved. There was a general peace, ever more prosperity from Mediterranean-wide trade, and a certain boredom and occasional cynicism among the Roman elite. Few then had any idea that three centuries of war, revolution, poverty and scary emperors like Commodus and Caracalla awaited their descendants - all a prelude to a later general collapse of Roman society itself.
In our own new age of war, terrorism, huge debt, high-priced gas and frightful weapons and viruses that we try to ignore, we should remember that civilization's progress is not always linear. The human condition does not inevitably evolve from good to better to best, but always remains precarious, its advances cyclical.
The good life sometimes can be lost quite unexpectedly and abruptly when people demand rights more than they accept responsibilities, or live for present consumption rather than sacrifice for future investment, or feel their own culture is not particularly exceptional and therefore in no need of constant support and defense.
We should tread carefully in these challenging days of our greatest wealth - and even greater vulnerability.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/ NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
What a way to start my morning!
The thin veneer of civilization...
--excellent, as usual from VDH. I keep reminding younger people to remember that booms are followed by busts-usually falls on deaf ears.
"Think of civilization as a great, inverted pyramid.
The point it balances on is the first step man took, when he picked up a stick to use as a tool.
Each layer above that is built, thicker and higher, on successive steps of technology, until you get to today's world.
Instant messages, Ipods & cell phones, "poor" in America really more like middle class in other countries.
Now, imagine how easy it is to push that pyramid over, it being so topheavy, balanced on a point..."
That's key. The distinction between rights and privileges has been largely lost--thanks to dimwit teachers, the boob tube and pandering politicans.
Sometimes, it is good to see something that deals with the core issues of what it means to be conservative.
I'm sure some here will dismiss this but I found it a good reality check.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
Nor should they. IMO, Presidents don't make or break the economy.
The warnings of Cassandra.
And right along with it the destruction of the required link between freedom and responsibility.
Yes, and this is very likely the way that we reduce our national debt; just inflate it away.
Not exactly the average person's favorite topic. Most tend to simply push the subject away and think about day-to-day survival or the enjoyment of special privilege and status that came to them with relatively little effort.
Unfortunately we also have bred generations of the clueless. Social overhead which can instantly turn to midless mobs literally everywhere, but primarily in and around our large cities.
How do you convince millions that their future life depends on continuous effort when they have been told that they have "rights" with no corresponding responsibilities? Children are society's problems, not my own. With a straight face, people of all ages, but primarily the young and healthy can and do expect that statements like "not enough government help!" is the final solution to all their problems.
Imagine this: If a mob of toughs breaks your door down and announces that they are "moving in" with you, and the police phone lines are "busy", what will you do? Preposterous? That is exactly the life of millions where neither law nor social conscience or expectations exist.
We are "different" from them only by a matter of a few weeks.
Three days into empty Wal-Mart shelves you'll see anarchy.
Hanson's right, of course. Too many Americans see our country's affluence as a birthright, an entitlement. They have forgotten that our liberty was purchased by the blood of patriots and that it continues only because we have patriots who are willing to sacrifice themselves for our country. They harp on the failings of our country while helping themselves to generous bounty that our political and economic freedom have created. They reject traditional, Judeo-Christian morality even though they benefit from the moral capital that morality created. But that moral capital is running out and when it does, this nation will collapse. Unless we do something to restore the moral underpinnings that made America great, the America that we know could soon cease to exist. The barbarians are at the gates. Is anyone paying attention?
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."
- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798 Address
Good point.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.