Days of Whine and Poses

Obviously it was impolitic for Phil Gramm to say that the U.S. is “a nation of whiners” in the throes of a “mental recession”. He quickly tried to backtrack, and Senator McCain, whom he has been advising on economic matters, suggested that he has lost his chance for any post more consequential than ambassador to Belarus.

Eppur si muove. By the standards of our past (if not by those of modern Europe), “nation of whiners” is right on the mark. The confident, resilient, ingenious Americans, who seized independence from the world’s mightiest empire, settled a continent, forged the most prosperous nation in the history of mankind, assimilated tens of millions of immigrants, pivoted three times from peace to total war, and through all vicissitudes maintained and expanded their freedoms – are they not now an endangered species? The grumpy old sages who forecast that a prosperous republic would in the end succumb to moral and mental softness can’t be facilely refuted on the basis of current evidence.

The ultimate measure of whether a country can survive is whether it can endure a long war. If it can’t, it will eventually give way to its enemies. By that test, the United States is in serious trouble. If Iraq has been a traumatic challenge, will public opinion tolerate a serious war, one with casualties of several thousand a month, rather than a thousand a year? Will any future President dare risk such a confrontation?

Opponents of the Iraqi campaign pretend that they object to it only on cost-benefit grounds, but that is patently untrue of the vast majority. When the going was easy, the war was popular – even among liberal Democrats. But when the enemy kept fighting back, courage failed. Were it not for George W. Bush’s willingness to sacrifice popularity for the sake of victory, our country would have suffered the most humiliating military defeat in our history, and all the world’s mufsidun would today be ecstatically pummeling the Great Satan wherever and whenever they could.

This easy discouragement is what the old moralizers expected any time a people became too contented and comfortable. They would be unsurprised, too, by the panicky reaction to current economic conditions. To judge by polls, the country is in the worst shape since pollsters started asking the public to opine – worse, for instance, than in 1980, when the unemployment and inflation rates were 7.5 and 13.5 percent, respectively. Only those who take fat years for granted could be so nonplused by the present slowdown.

In the course of castigating Senator Gramm, the usually sensible Dean Barnett illustrates my point:

Contra Gramm, there are fundamental problems with the economy that have given the American people a serious case of agita. Many Americans have seen the value of their homes depreciate dramatically in recent times. They’ve also seen a huge increase in fuel prices. Both of these situations are beyond the typical American’s power to address. . . . The causes of the insecurity are real, and the diminishment of the typical American’s economic situation is equally real.

Contra Barnett, anyone who bought his current home more than about three years ago is likely still to have a substantial profit, the recent pullback is of concern only to homeowners who are overburdened with debt or who plan to exit from home ownership in the near future, falling housing costs are a boon to new buyers, and gasoline prices, in relation to family income, are not especially high. The “diminishment of the typical American’s economic situation” isn’t an illusion, but it is a modest decline from a high peak. A generation ago, it would have passed almost unnoticed. Now we hear cries about a second Great Depression.

Further evidence of a pampered existence is the fashion for hypersensitivity. The schoolyard chant has morphed to, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names are really, really hurtful.” Men who have never faced genuine challenges – moan and groan about using “man” as a generic noun. Or declare that particular ethnic slurs are so unspeakably horrible that they cannot be mentioned even to condemn them and must be excised from works of literature. (I merely sigh at the earnest fellow who condemned the word “niggardly”; no doubt there were Victorian spinsters who wouldn’t let “factotum” escape their lips.) Pari passu the bounds of “inappropriate conduct” have expanded so far that one can hardly avoid violating the rules of the new etiquette. A legion of perpetually offended, constantly angry poseurs has replaced the brash, cheerful, thick-skinned Americano of yesteryear, and the alteration is not for the better.

It occurs to me that, though he never speaks of it, Senator Obama may see the state of the nation as I do. He proposes high taxes, high energy costs, expanded government regulation and an approach to terrorism that is bound to generate more terrorists. Perhaps he believes that the best way to restore the national character is to strip away the placid comfort we have been enjoying. Hasn’t his wife told us, “Barack Obama will require you to work”. Maybe to suffer, too, but it will be for our own good in the end.

Then, once the citizenry has reacquired the virtues of self-reliance, persistence, stoicism and hard work, it can vote out the saviors and get back to acting like Americans instead of European fainéants.

Alternatively, we could prove the moralizers wrong by keeping both our comforts and our virtues. While I’m not entirely sure how to accomplish that, it seems worth a try.

Comments

[pbh]

“Were it not for George W. Bush’s willingness to sacrifice popularity for the sake of victory, our country would have suffered the most humiliating military defeat in our history . . .”

Were it not for Bush’s self-serving lies our country would never heve been mired in a criminal war of choice that has benefited only its profiteers and our enemies.

“falling housing costs are a boon to new buyers, and gasoline prices, in relation to family income, are not especially high.”

Housing prices would not fall if there were buyers.

Gasoline prices have nearly tripled in the past four years, while median family income in the US was flat (according to the 2008 Statistical Abstract) from 2001 to 2005. I doubt somehow that this situation has improved since then.