Spectacles of Turbulence:

The Death of American Exceptionalism

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

In President Bill Clinton’s 1993 State of the Union address, he said:

Later this year, we will offer a plan to end welfare as we know it. No one wants to change the welfare system as much as those who are trapped by the welfare system.

Of course, the former President was speaking of the damage done to America’s permanent underclass while addressing a Newt Gingrich “conservative” majority, swept into power by a promised “Contract with America.” With time, the Republican majority lost its way, devolving into the very monster it sought to slay.

Federal expenditures for the poor never posed a real danger to America’s future (there numbers are small compared to the general population). The American middle class, rather, are the ones hopelessly trapped by the entitlements of Social Security; farm supports; education; health care; and an array of endless and ill-conceived bailouts for failed industries; these are the real threats to individual freedom and the financial future of our nation's people.

Back in the day, citizens voted their pocket books (keeping more of their hard-earned money out of the hands of venal politicians). Today, corrupt voters elect corrupt politicians to separate neighbors from their pocketbooks. And the contest between the nation’s two major political parties is over what entitlement programs will buy them seats in congress or four years in the Oval Office.

In the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote, “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”

The American democratic impulse has “assimilated” the vast population’s driving passion for more addictive entitlements. In other words, European nanny-state pedestrianism has replaced American individualist “exceptionalism.” The New World has become old again; and our frightened, huddled masses yearn for a king and his ministers to care for them. God save the King!  

Unfortunately, the economy isn’t under the sceptored sway of King Obama the First. No king, president, or congressional committee member has the magical power to produce a vibrant, expanding economy. Didn’t the collapse of the Soviet Union teach us anything? How many Cuban refugees in makeshift rafts will it take to convince people that command economies (especially ones closely tied to personality cults like Cuba, and now America) produce only one commodity in abundance – misery?

Like it or not the only system that consistently generates enough wealth to “spread around” is imperfect capitalism. Socialism, by it very nature, is parasitical. It sucks the life’s blood from economies until, like the Soviet Union, the emaciated host finally gives up the ghost.

The imagination and productive enterprise of 300-million free, God-fearing Americans drives this economy and always has. Amazingly, Americans have forgotten this, to their shame.

“As a nation of freemen,” said Abraham Lincoln, “we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” The people of our fragile democracy have chosen suicide, and thier elected representatives, Dr. Kevorkian -like, appear more than happy to assist.

--Mr. Curmudgeon