Posted by
ClearCommentary.com on Sunday, July 13, 2008 4:22:56 PM
One of the profound problems with American culture is its blinkered collectivism, which instinctively looks to a tacit consensus for every problem, from challenges at work to the cost of gas. When problems that are rightfully the charge of individuals become immersed in a culture of whiners, the spur that historically sparked personal and professional innovation is extinguished.
Former Senator Phil Gramm was pilloried last week for stating the obvious, which is that our nation has become a sea of complainers who seem to relish moaning about their fate, fully confident in their inability to do anything about it.
Indeed, we're encouraged to compare and hold culpable those more successful than ourselves, with CEOs, who, in the court of cultural opinion, receive 'obscene salaires,' we reflexively vilify corporations, paradoxically, those that are most successful, because, according to the mainstream media and all cultural signposts, they must have achieved it through duplicity or illicit activities. In truth, barring putative illegalities, the worst sin a corporation can commit is to fail to make a profit, which, of course many do. America's auto industries are a sorry case in point, a study in gross mismanagement and myopia, yet they seem immune from criticism that can be legitimately laid at their doorstep.
Instead, we drag pharmaceutical and oil companies to the edge of town and put them in stocks, companies that spend the vast majority of their profits on research and development, which save lives and power our automobiles respectively. We excoriate financial lenders for merely pursuing a Congressionally authorized new market--customers with sub-optimal credit--because our elected officials recalibrated the definition of credit-worthiness, for the laudable, if wholly misinformed goal of home-ownership.
We further collectivize our consensual economic angst by blaming others for the fact that we may not be fully prepared to meet the challenges of a global economy, that our job doesn't pay 'enough,' or that the costs of raising a family are prohibitive. Our national savings rate has plummeted in the past two decades with people spending more, as a percentage of their income, on cars, dining out, and vacations, than ever before--and complaining (read, whining) to anyone who will listen.
It's a pathetic thing to see adults acting like children, but that's precisely what we're witnessing. Of course, no one likes the fact that gas prices have doubled in two years, that people who make imprudent mortgage decisions are in pain, but what ever happened to that sense of American resolve, the virtue of individual responsibility, which sustained previous generations through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Depression and two World Wars?
Why have we become habituated complainers who externalize the source of our individual problems and who look to collectivist solutions from politicians and bureaucrats, the people least capable of providing real and lasting improvements in our lives?
Americans across the political spectrum ought to agree with the fundamental premise that we must own our challenges, our missteps, our setbacks, which means the rewards we realize, be they meager or great, are of our own creation, not the product of the blunt hand of government, printing 'stimulus' checks, drafting Draconian regulations to punish the stigmatized industry du jour, or protracting unemployment checks, all of which diminish individual initiative and reinforce the utterly false notion that we're owed something.
It's unquestionably too much to ask McCain, much less Obama, to speak the truth to us about this, because whether it's reforming Social Security or Medicare, or reducing the deficit, we've apparently convinced ourselves that it's just not a message we want to hear. At least that's what we're continually told through our mainstream media, our entertainment outlets, public school system and academia.
So, if our politicians seem desperate to federalize every problem, regardless of its magnitude or rightful ownership, it's because every signal we've telegraphed reaffirms that we don't want to hear the truth.
It's apparently much easier to whine.