More A Decline of the Spirit?
There are lots of ways to lament America's current financial and cultural dilemmas. We borrow to satisfy our entitlement appetites; we do not fully develop our natural riches, especially gas and oil on federal lands, as if regulating is more important than producing them; we do not honor the law, seeking either to overturn it through an activist judiciary or simply bypass it by executive orders (or ignore it out of politically-correct, ends-justify-the-means smugness). There is a general sense that there are no consequences to much of anything these days: radios blare ads about how to get out of mortgage debt, IRS debt, credit card debt (as if "they" put a gun to our heads to borrow); the farm bill provides for nearly 50 million on food stamps, many who by past standards would not qualify, and gives direct payments to agribusiness at a time of record-high commodity prices. One earns more disdain by trying to enforce immigration law than by breaking it.
Behind these symptoms are lots of larger pathologies. Postmodern relativism -- itself a natural outgrowth of Marxism -- has infected even the primary schools, as truth and right are not absolute but become fluid and depend on matters of race, class, and gender. High technology has given us all sorts of stuff that fooled us into thinking that our ability to text message or play video simulations means that somehow we are educated or exceptional when we are not. Enforced sameness is now the role of government run by technocrats who are exempt from their own equality-of-result ideas.
And yet we are still not quite at the root of our problem, since all of the above derives from an ungrounded citizen. Too many of us grow up without any need of physical labor, much less enduring the monotony of hard work, and so do not respect those who clean our toilets or produce our food or cut our timber—or think we should ever have to endure such an indignity ourselves. We know nothing of nature, and therefore romanticize it rather than develop a guarded respect for its fury and cruelty (I wish that smug San Franciscans really would vote to blow up Hetch Hetchy as some propose, and then learn what happens when 85 percent of their water supply vanishes, and with it much of their green energy -- recycled water in Pacific Heights, lights out at 8 PM on Nob Hill?). And we do not develop the tragic view inherent in an active physical life, where all the technology in the world and good intentions and 'right' thoughts do not prevent a gas refinery from exploding, a grape crop from rotting a day before harvest, or a mine from collapsing without warning. Quite simply, there are no longer enough self-reliant, independent citizens left to remind the majority that our present complexity is neither assured nor our birthright. I wish we had just a few hundred thousand more small hardware owners and wheat farmers and a few less Facebook executives to question the trends and assumptions of the homogenized majority.
It's hard to admit that in times of financial turmoil much of our sense of decline is not because there is an absence of fast food, too few flat-screen TVs, or the inability to buy sneakers, but rather because there is an inability to keep acquiring and enjoying these things at a geometric rate. We are borrowing trillions from the Chinese, 400 million of whom have never seen a Western doctor, as we create vast new entitlements like Obamacare.
The decline of the family farm and the family business explains much, as Jefferson warned us. Children of the elite not only do not feel they have to work at distasteful jobs, but have no idea how labor contributes to the viability of their own family. Something is wrong when agribusiness claims they need guest workers, but the unemployment rate among youth of all races often exceeds 20 percent. To drive through a rural central California community at 10 AM is to see hundreds of young males not at work—even as we are told there are scores of jobs that go unfilled.
I don't think this is just an idle agrarian rant, because we see the symptoms of society's sense of something missing almost everywhere: the fascination not just with the farmers' markets, but with those who raise and sell produce at them; the desire of metrosexuals to outfit with pricey work clothes, heavy hiking boots, 4-wheel drive cars, snow tires, and rugged coats, as if the suburbanite is eagerly headed out to work on an oil rig, or climb on a John Deere; the growing dread that the present system cannot go on, which leads the homeowner to stock up on food and emergency staples; the explosion of gym and workout centers, not just to keep in shape, but to look as if one had the muscles of a railroad worker or lumberjack; the fear and respect for the shrinking muscular classes (as if the kitchen remodeler or Mercedes mechanic is doing something as esoteric as brain surgery and may charge too much out of spite at the more privileged clueless). The attraction to someone like Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie I think owes in part to the fact they do not look or talk like the usual blow-dryed, nasal-speaking bureaucrat. I suppose the end of the U.S. is when we all end up speaking and acting like a Jay Carney.
To sum up: Politics aside, I prefer the world of George Meany to Tim Geithner; or of Gary Cooper to Matt Damon. The former showed a little wear, the others none at all.
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Mar '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
The Founders didn't consider it the job of government to instill virtue, they considered it a prerequisite to the existence and success of self-government. A people which lacks virtue lacks the ability to maintain our constitutional form of government.
How's that working out for us today?
Aug '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Now that's how you finish off a piece! With style!
Mar '12
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Aug '10
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Excellent essay, Mr. Hanson. I am 41. As a child, youth and young adult I mowed yards for work, split wood at our family farm for firewood, worked my grandfather's beef cattle, planted pine trees by dibbling the trees, burned woods to clear undergrowth, picked up pecans, worked in vegetable gardens, etc. etc. And I had it easy compared to my uncle. Such an experience inculcated a strong work ethic, a direct connection between hard work and food or warmth and the knowledge that I'd rather use my head than my back to earn a living. Hard work teaches virtue.
Jun '10
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Xennady
Mark Lewis
The market teaches virtue as well as the farm. We do not need government to do so.
Hmmm. When I enlisted in the US Navy at 17 I did not swear an oath to defend and uphold the market.
Xennedy - "the market" is not a thing, it is an idea. Free markets are a way of describing the natural outcome of what happens when a government protects our life, liberty, property, and hence the freedom to pursue our happiness according to our conscience. When you protect and uphold the Constitution with basic originalism, you support a free-market.
My point is that the natural incentives in a free-market promote the virtues that make America great: respect, self-reliance, freedom of choice, rationality, partnership, integrity, long-term thinking, etc.
Most importantly, it encourages each person to use and develop their intelligence according to their ambition. When people know that they are responsible for themselves or the charity of people who will look them in the eye (the worthy poor, as they were once called), they are increasingly likely to choose professions that afford them the lifestyle (time, $, friends, ease, intellectual stimulation) that serves them.
Jun '10
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Astonishing
Of course, libertarians will always object that government has "no business" caring about virtue, but unthinking adherence to that silly idea is a primary cause of our present mess.
They might. I would say that government has "no clue" about how to promote virtue, and that putting that in their hands is to ask for what we have currently.
Nov '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Illiniguy
The Founders didn't consider it the job of government to instill virtue, they considered it a prerequisite to the existence and success of self-government. . . .
Washington's First Inaugural, beautiful as it is, doesn't particularly support the contention that government should not take care about virute, but can equally be read to support the opposite view. Indeed, in his Farewell Address, Washington suggests government should not be "indifferen[t]," but should "promote" the virtue of the people:
Feb '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Mark Lewis
When you protect and uphold the Constitution with basic originalism, you support a free-market.
Yet at the time the Constitution was adopted and for a long time after the Federal government interfered with the market by imposing import tariffs- and later it restricted immigration also.
I have been sternly told at various occasions here that both are indefensible and unacceptable.
I dispute this, obviously. I often get the sense that people are discussing business and not politics- and seem utterly mystified as to how the US ended up in such deep trouble.
I hasten to add that I'm not shoehorning you into that category and I agree in a certain sense with what you say.
But I'm discussing politics, not business- or personal virtue.
The end result of the globalization you mentioned hasn't been a wonderful flowering of self-reliance and rationality.
It's been California.
Jul '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
People fall down. If there's no cushion to fall back onto, it'll hurt. A lot. If there's a cushion, it hurts less. The bigger the cushion, the bigger the....less hurtin'. So to speak.
Progressive thought wants to create wraparound cushions for the citizenry. The bigger the cushion, the better the job they're doing - in their minds. They're not interested in real freedom of thought, movement, decision-making - they want to wrap all of us in the same velvet coffin, purportedly for our own good. What this really seems to do is appease either a larger sense of insecurity, or a desire to create conformity of thought, where ideas remain unchallenged.
If you wrap enough people, especially children, in these cushions, they'll get used to it. They'll expect it. They will be less able to stand on their own two feet, which guarantees a job and a vote for a Democrat/Progressive somewhere in a Bureaucracy Near You. There are now generations of Americans expecting the cushion, and you can bet they'll vote for the guy who promises more of the same. Count on it. Every time.
Jul '12
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
I love VDH's writing but his glorification of the American Farmer and denigration of the American Yuppie are misguided. I won't begrudge a man for getting his rant on about the absurdities of the Bay Area. But let's look at farming: It is the most subsidized, trade protected industry in the US. If you stand at one end of the Dept of Agriculture, the perspective lines meet before you see the other end of the hall. There is no equivalent building protecting software engineers. We could drop all the tariffs and subsidies for farmers, get all our food from third world countries, and we would be just as well fed. The force multipliers in wars; autonomous planes, cruise missiles and satellites are all the products of the intelligentsia. And yuppies go to the gym b/c they sit at desks all day. None of them are trying to emulate the rotund physiques of rural America. He likes farmers b/c they develop a visceral awareness of man's limits and the world's complexity. But the same goes for anyone who's ever tried to build anything worthy.
Edited on August 10, 2012 at 2:03pmFeb '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Willy Pell,
Seems like VDH hit a nerve, somewhat.
Ironically one of most common plaints I see online is about H1B visas. So if software engineers aren't protected they really really wanna be.
Not only that but everything I've seen about the Dept. of Agriculture implies that it protects agribusiness and not farmers.
Plus, I didn't see VDH rail against the people who engineered cruise missiles, etc.
So pardon me for thinking that your comment reflects your inflamed nerve and not what VDH actually wrote.
Hey- I love your hat. What was it protecting you from?
Nov '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Yes, Rousseau's Romanticism, which we receive with our mother's milk, causes contradictions right and left, with its insatiable yearning to return to a simpler, more virtuous (mythical) past, when humans lived closer to the land in harmony with nature, babies were breast fed, and chemical fertilizer had not yet been invented: On the right, VDH; on the left, women who shop 100% unprocessed organic but claim a constitutional right to free RU486.
At least VDH seems to have a suspicion that something about his thinking is out of kilter when--in a Freudian way with an inclusive "we"--he admits, "We know nothing of nature, and therefore romanticize it."
Jul '12
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Xennady,
The ungrounded, iPhone tapping, chest shaving yuppies are the future of this country. They give us the innovation and productivity gains that keep our economy competitive and their technology gives us the force multipliers that keep our country safe. Their spirit is a HUGE disappointment. I agree with him there. Now let's get to farmers. Take away the government dams, subsidized water, subsidized crops and the protection from third world farmers willing to do the job for less and there would be no farmers in the US. Yes, their brains are immune to the gelatinous, post modern poison that infects the urban and yes they make up more of the soldiers. But all told, the urban pull a lot more weight than the rural. That's what I was unsuccessfully trying to get at in my previous post. The urban have issues. But the romanticization of farmers and denigration of the yuppies is, when taken as a whole, misguided.
Edited on August 10, 2012 at 10:34pmFeb '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Willy Pell,
I have nothing against chest shaving yuppies but I find it very interesting that you describe the engineering works that make American farming so productive as mere subsidies to the unimportant.
I take this as the general attitude of the present American ruling class. That is, most people in the US are just grossly overpaid dimbulbs who should shut up and be as productive as the average illegal alien or iPhone factory worker. And that ruling class has no interest at all in such grubby work as farming or cleaning toilets and no respect for the people engaged at such jobs. So they attach no regard to the need for farmers or refineries or dams, etc, figuring that lesser lights will take care of all that on command.
A historian named Moses Finley wrote more about this subject than VDH has, but no matter.
So in my view VDH wasn't merely paying homage to farmers for the sake of farming- or denigrating software engineers either. He was lamenting grim social and political flaws in American society.
Jul '12
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Xennady,
If he had made the same argument using brick-layers or construction workers I would not have had a problem. I think it's hypocritical for VDH to lecture workers in profitable, unsubsidized industries for not having the values of the workers of a heavily subsidized industry.
Feb '11
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Point taken- but to defend VDH I think he chose his examples courtesy of his background and experience, not because he idolizes farmers or dislikes software engineers per se.
But as a non-farmer and non-software engineer I obviously read the post differently than you, and I've seen the same symptoms he laments around my area.
Jul '12
Re: More A Decline of the Spirit?
Xennady,
Right on. Great talking to you. BTW helmet is for falling rocks while climbing mountains.