Seeds

Pat Buchanan has an article on Townhall asking whether America is coming apart. He bewails our balkinization and loss of shared culture, but it’s a good bewailing, Pat, I don’t imply a criticism. He seems a bit bewildered, in a “how could this happen?” kind of way, and I suspect a device because Pat knows how it started.

The seeds were planted in the 30’s.

Oh, here you go, Schlub, going onto the FDR trope again. Well, yeah, ’cause if you haven’t figured it out by now, ideas have long term effect, which is why some ideas, like Communism and Nazism, are debilitating and cancerous and simply should be wiped out. Look at it. We came very close in the 30’s to giving up the Constitution and turning into a collective. There was a lot of push for it. FDR was the American Stalin, and he surrounded himself with a lot of bright eyed youngsters who had met Joe Stalin, loved him, and thought collectivization was the cat’s meow. They made a giant effort in that direction and, IMHO, at least half succeeded. What is Social Security but the socialism of retirement? America had been set up for it by a national enamoring of All Things Russian, by the stupidity of Hoover (who was NOT a conservative), and by the huge push of labor organizers and groups like the Wobblies. We was all thinnin’ this commie social structure twern’t half bad. Couple that with the Depression and the way many businesses and corporate leaders put on their Marie Antoinette masks, and you’re set.

But, then, hey, the nature of man asserts itself and you get Stalin and Hitler’s pact and then Poland and then that whole Word War 2 thing and America slaps itself upside the head and goes, “What we were thinking?” Go over there, kick some ass, put our national character back up on the pedestal, and try to forget what we were doing earlier. Except we didn’t forget. A lot of those 30’s persons still held fond memories of the pre-Hitler Stalin and the horrors of the war reinforced their desire for a utopian world. So they turned to us, their kids, and said, “We’re going to make a better world for you.” They lavished us with gifts and toys and cars and better food and TV and wonderful education theories from Dewey and wonderful parenting from Spock and Sarte-inspired self-absorption and thought we could have both worlds: a benevolent centralized direction of our lives coupled with individuality and self-made prosperity.

But you can’t.

It’s an either/or situation. You are either a free and independent individual making your way based on your own capabilities, or you are part of the mass directed by some larger power. And given the choice of the tough, individual life filled with much struggle and disappointment, or a relatively benign life where the biggest struggle is whether your Mom likes your boyfriend or not and which college you should attend, where do most people opt?

You cannot maintain a culture of rugged individualism when the majority base ruggedness on the kind of latte they're offered. When “my country” is replaced by “me,” things fall apart.

But you already know that, Pat.