My grandfather was a young man during the Great Depression and may be one of the best people I've ever known. He has worked hard for himself, for his family, and wants little more than the simple pleasures in life. Like so many of his generation he was in World War II, not as a general or as a lieutenant, but a sergeant. A cog in Patton's Wheel, a fortunate man. When I was younger he gave me a two-dollar bill and said “always keep this in your billfold and you'll be able to say you've never been broke.” I carry it around with me every day and never, ever spend it.
I don't think we as younger people listen very well to the generations that came before us, or vice-versa.
We're more than happy to take a seat in the Ivory Tower and look down upon the grand creation that their blood, sweat, and tears helped make, but we don't look at ways to improve the system they put in place. We are far more inclined to be lazy, to use the shiny new toys that have been left for us and apply the same tired, flawed methodology to our world.
When we look at recent history, we often look at the world crafted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and World War II, a period of mass death and atrocity that we almost glorify for the gloss that we give the heroics of our Allied troops. Without a doubt there were heroics, and it showed humanity at its best, but through our suffering revealed us at our worst in the Holocaust. And if you look deeply enough, aside from our natural inclination to fight and misunderstand each other, the conflict took root in the Great Depression and the fears, economic woes, and crime that took place within it.
Some, such as Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, have suggested that the Federal Reserve System caused the Great Depression by contracting the money supply at the very moment that markets needed liquidity. F.A. Hayek, another Nobel Laureate economist, often argued that “I think what is needed is a clear set of principles which enables us to distinguish between the legitimate fields of government activities and the illegitimate fields of government activity. You must cease to argue for and against government as such.” Even laureate John Nash has come out with criticism of Keynesian Economic Theory, indicating that his views parallel those of Hayek and Friedman.
Three Nobel Prize winners that we aren't listening to. We should be asking ourselves why.
In January, President Obama made a speech at George Mason University about the nature of our economic woes, American history, and how we should deal with them. This is not an argument from a standpoint of politics, but rather an attempt at a reasoned look point-by-point of a few choice statements he made:
"We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime, a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks."
If you look at history, this is patently untrue. The Great Depression was the worst crisis in recent memory, and there are still many left alive who can speak of it, the problems of it and the extreme moral hypocrisy of that period.
"For if we hope to end this crisis, we must end the culture of "anything goes" that helped create it, and this change must begin in Washington."
This country does not, nor has it ever had a culture of “anything goes.” Since the Industrial Revolution our markets have been regulated more heavily by the government, not less, and when you compare the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression, you find a world of greater moral hypocrisy, not less. The Roaring Twenties carried art and culture and a great deal of excess, but the Great Depression gave us government corruption, organized crime, and violations of law from the highest office to the lowest.
"It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth. But at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the cycle that is crippling our economy, where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs, which leads to even less spending, where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit."
I worry about a leader who wields as much control as Mr. Obama does and yet tells his people that only government can bring the country out of its current state of woe. Life is a matter of choice, which is something we should never forget, and there is never one solution to a problem or one path to follow. The centralized banking, centralized power plan has been tried time and time again, and it has never brought us out of the woods. There is no easy solution to our economic recession or depression, but it strikes me that we've been pounding square pegs into round holes for a very long time. If you don't believe me, look to the history of Great Britain and the nationalization of their industry after World War II.
What concerns me the most about our President is not his idealism or goodness, but his use of eristic dialogue to further his arguments. He hurls blame at the Bush Administration, at the so-called “Wall Street wrongdoers.” And he thrusts our generation out as the ones that should be cared for, as the children that should be adored and coddled and kept from a cold, painful world. I worry that we will not be able to break from the mistakes of our parents or grandparents if this continues. How can we ever grow if we are not given the opportunity to fall off our bicycles and pick ourselves back up again?
Most bothersome of all to me, personally—based on Christianity but reason—is the invocation of God in President Obama's speech. After his “clinging to guns and religion” quote that caught the headlines so well during the pre-election period, how can we trust him at his word that he even believes in God? And even if he does, we should not trust him blindly, follow him blindly, when he believes that only one solution is the solution to our problems.
I don't believe that love is something that is just given or taken. It's something that we learn and gain or lose as we live.
Blame is something implying that moral responsibility, in that a person did something bad and was doing it for bad reasons. It is not something we should throw around lightly, and it has been used in propaganda by governments for generations to invoke feelings of nationalism and support. We want to blame Wall Street for excesses, we want to blame capitalism for all our problems, but we don't examine why we are inclined to do this, or why we think this way. It's easy to blame, it's easy to follow the other solution as opposed to finding a Middle Way. We want to make life easy, and it just isn't.
Why don't we just blame the Kellys for all of our problems?
Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger and folk hero to many Australians for his defiance of colonial authorities. He murdered, stole, and connived his way to folk hero status as a legendary figure of defiance. He may have done wrong things, but for the right reasons, to win greater independence for his people. Do the British remember him as a hero or a criminal? I suspect it might be the latter. But the real Ned Kelly is lost to history, hero or bloody rebel, and yet his songs are still sung and offer echoes of our own revolution. He exists now as a concept, and as such perhaps even found his own way of cheating death, because concepts can never die.
Nor can bizarrely-edited YouTube videos.
But government comes and goes, kingdoms rise and fall, and our government is no different. The Food and Drug Administration, which ironically has just been given control over tobacco products, just discovered that a drug that they approved is causing Americans to lose their sense of smell. This was not revealed by a government study, but by private citizens and doctors. The FDA has not yet issued a recall for the product either, but rather a warning to a company whose potentially-dangerous product is still on the market.
I believe it's pretty clear that the government is not the answer to our problems, and we should try and shine the flashlight on them ever harder in the wake of all this. We are Americans, rebels, carers, not people of polar opposites. If we continue to live by polar opposites we may only tear ourselves apart. If we do not think or try or question, what is the point of being who we are?
Maybe we're just tilting windmills.
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