Anyway, contrary to what you may hear, David Brooks is moderate-conservative. I generally really like where he comes down on issues, and his perspective is different from the Townhall-National Review contingent that I normally follow, so he gives a lot of depth I think to my reading because sometimes I think what I follow may skew too far right.
I don't know why I bothered to bring that all up because I only really wanted to post his most recent article about The Commercial Republic. He talks about the entrepreneurial, can-do spirit of the American people, and how it gets somewhat suppressed during tough economic times, but always seems to prevail in the end. He says in the article:
The U.S. is in one of those pauses today. It has been odd, over the past six months, not to have the gospel of success as part of the normal background music of life. You go about your day, taking in the news and the new movies, books and songs, and only gradually do you become aware that there is an absence. There are no aspirational stories of rags-to-riches success floating around. There are no new how-to-get-rich enthusiasms. There are few magazine covers breathlessly telling readers that some new possibility — biotechnology, nanotechnology — is about to change everything. That part of American culture that stokes ambition and encourages risk has gone silent.We are now in an astonishingly noncommercial moment. Risk is out of favor. The financial world is abashed. Enterprise is suspended. The public culture is dominated by one downbeat story after another as members of the educated class explore and enjoy the humiliation of the capitalist vulgarians.
Washington is temporarily at the center of the nation’s economic gravity and a noncommercial administration holds sway. This is an administration that has many lawyers and academics but almost no businesspeople in it, let alone self-made entrepreneurs. The president speaks passionately about education and health care reform, but he is strangely aloof from the banking crisis and displays no passion when speaking about commercial drive and success.
But if there is one thing we can be sure of, this pause will not last. The cultural DNA of the past 400 years will not be erased. The pendulum will swing hard. The gospel of success will recapture the imagination.
He writes with a characteristic optimism that I really appreciate.
Today in Forbes, they posted online 20 Reasons for Optimism regarding the economic health of the country. Although I'm pleased about the rebound that's occurring, what is really annoying is that the credit for this will undoubtedly go to the Obama administration, but in reality, none of the measures that they have implemented will have anything to do with the upswing. There just hasn't been any time for any of his measures to take any effect in the time since he took office, and his stimulus package, enormous budget, health-care initiatives, are likely to hinder most of the surge that really should be taking place.
What's the lesson people? Let the market forces correct itself. What should have happened to AIG? They should have let it fail. Now there's no clear plan, and an enormous uproar over the execs getting bonuses, and still no real accountability from anyone about it all. We'll probably just end up pouring more money into the system because we're already so heavily invested in them emerging successfully.
Who here took economics? Sunk cost. Let it go. Let Detroit go too. Unions are awful. I got a future post on unions...
One final thing...if you actually read the Brooks' article, he mentions a Whitman essay called Democratic Vistas. Apparently my concept of "essay" is entirely different from the 19th century version because his is 60 pages long...yikes.
Be blessed y'all.
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