Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ryst Helmut]

Ok, I got this through an e-mail and a few of us coincidentally had a discussion about this recently...thought this article may provide some interesting discussion.




FAILURE OF AN IDEA -- AND A PEOPLE

In his 1935 State of the Union Address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
spoke to a nation mired in the Depression, but still marinated in
conservative values: "Continued dependence" upon welfare, said FDR,
"induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the
national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a
narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

Behind FDR's statement was the conviction that, while the government
must step in in an emergency, in normal times, men provide the food,
clothing and shelter for their families. And we did, until the war
pulled us out of the Depression and a postwar boom made us, in John K.
Galbraith's phrase, The Affluent Society. By the 1960s, America, the
richest country on earth, was growing ever more prosperous. But with
the 1964 landslide of LBJ, liberalism triumphed and began its great
experiment.

Behind the Great Society was a great idea: to lift America's poor out
of poverty, government should now take care of all their basic needs.
By giving the poor welfare, subsidized food, public housing and free
medical care, government will end poverty in America.

At the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center, we saw the failure
of 40 years of the Great Society. No sooner had Katrina passed by and
the 17th Street levee broke than hundreds of young men who should have
taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies
to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape. The New Orleans
police, their numbers cut by deserters who left their posts to look
after their families, engaged in running gun battles all day long to
stay alive and protect people.

It was the character and conduct of its people that makes the New
Orleans disaster unique. After a hurricane, people's needs are simple:
food, water, shelter, medical attention. But they can be hard to meet.
People buried in rubble or hiding in attics of flooded homes are tough
to get to. But, even with the incompetence of the mayor and governor,
and the torpor of federal officials, this was possible.

Coast Guard helicopters were operating Tuesday. There were roads open
into the city for SUVs, buses and trucks. While New Orleans was
flooded, the water was stagnant. People walked through to the
convention center and Superdome. The flimsiest boat could navigate.

Even if government dithered for days -- what else is new -- this does
not explain the failure of the people themselves!

Between 1865 and 1940, the South -- having lost a fourth of its best
and bravest in battle, devastated by war, mired in poverty -- was
famous for the hardy self-reliance of her people, black and white.

In 1940, hundreds of British fishermen and yachtsmen sailed back and
forth daily under fire across a turbulent 23-mile Channel to rescue
300,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. How do we explain to the world that a
tenth of that number of Americans could not be reached in four days
from across a stagnant pond?

The real disaster of Katrina was that society broke down. An entire
community could not cope. Liberalism, the idea that good intentions
and government programs can build a Great Society, was exposed as
fraud. After trillions of tax dollars for welfare, food stamps, public
housing, job training and education have poured out since 1965,
poverty remains pandemic. But today, when the police vanish, the
community disappears and men take to the streets to prey on women and
the weak.

Stranded for days in a pool of fetid water, almost everyone waited for
the government to come save them. They screamed into the cameras for
help, and the reporters screamed into the cameras for help, and the
"civil rights leaders" screamed into the cameras that Bush was
responsible and Bush was a racist.

Americans were once famous for taking the initiative, for having young
leaders rise up to take command in a crisis. See any of that at the
Superdome? Sri Lankans and Indonesians, far poorer than we, did not
behave like this in a tsunami that took 400 times as many lives as
Katrina has thus far.

We are the descendants of men and women who braved the North Atlantic
in wooden boats to build a country in a strange land. Our ancestors
traveled thousands of miles in covered wagons, fighting off Indians
far braver than those cowards preying on New Orleans' poor.

Watching that performance in the Crescent City, it seems clear: We are
not the people our parents were. And what are all our Lords Temporal
now howling for? Though government failed at every level, they want
more government.

FDR was right. A "spiritual disintegration" has overtaken us.
Government-as-first provider, the big idea of the Great Society, has
proven to be "a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

Either we get off this narcotic, or it kills us.









By: Patrick J. Buchanan (I think)


!shoosh

Ryst

[Ya-ta Boy]

Cute.

Pat left out some of the key parts in his description of the Great Society.

Conservatives like to omit certain things when they talk about this kind of thing. One major thing they like to leave out is the nature of industrial (and now post-industrial) society. This kind of society, where people are pried off the land so farms can achieve economy of scale means they are pushed into the cities to work in the factories (and now service) jobs. But the economy does not provide an excess of jobs. Modern economies like to have a 'flexible' labor force. But what that means is that businesses need to be able to hire and fire workers to meet the needs of their market. Fair enough, but that puts the burden on individual people to keep feeding their family when their is no job.

A second thing he left out is that the Great Society focused not only on emergency relief but on job training. The economy keeps changing and it's expensive to keep going back to school to get retrained when the nature of available jobs changes. It's also impossible if you have no job to pay for it.

He also likes to make 'welfare' sound like a bad thing, but defines welfare very narrowly. I would say that prolonged dependence of businesses on government handouts is also destructive of the entreprenurial spirit. Why improve your product or your managerial skills when you can just buy a politician to pass laws to limit competition.

But I think the most serious thing he left out when he wrote about the New Deal and the Great Society is that at both periods there was a spirit of 'we are all in this together'. We all have a part to play and it's an important part.

Since 1969 the conservatives have been in power most of the time. It's a good idea to look at what kind of society they want to create. The key questions to ask are: Why does it now take a husband and wife working to pay for a lifestyle that was once provided by just one of them working? Will the country be healthy if the wealth becomes heavily concentrated in the hands of the few?

[Privateer]

He also 'forgot' that people were told to go to the stadium and promised aid. And that people trying to walk out of New Orleans were turned back.

Cut welfare. Why not. It's another step closer to the law of the jungle.

[laogaiguk]