Reagan began a revolution in this country wherein the mythology of conservatism and rugged individualism took over the land driven by the manifesto that big government was the enemy and the only cure was big business unregulated. The Reagan honeymoon cannot continue for much longer; indeed, to some degree it suffered a setback during the Clinton years. Although it was resurrected in 2000 and seemingly its illusory system has reached a crescendo today, there are ominous signs that the manifesto is frayed.
For fifty years the merger of government and business created a growing middle class and set out reasonably well to rectify the injustice wreaked on the disadvantaged. The liberal credo of both major parties was not to promise the moon, but modestly to level the playing ground for the common good and to monitor excessive demands by both management and labor to sustain a balance in the wealth of the nation. Today wealth is perceived as individuated ownership of a nation, much like shareholders; on the contrary, it is the collective energy of a people to forge pride in a commonwealth of justice and tranquility. “Shareholders” tend to focus on management as the god of profit-making and forget the labor end that makes it all happen. They are also myopic in believing that in virtue of inalienable ownership their well-being is based solely on their own brilliance, ignoring not only the labor behind their good fortune, but also the concerted teams behind to feed them, to protect and beautify property, insure against fraud and safety of trust funds, to systemize the education of their children, and to defend the nation from marauders to strip away its resources. In this light, entrepreneurism and rugged individualism diminish in importance, since “no man is an island unto himself.”
Fortunately in this great nation founded on law, reason, and compassion for the “general welfare” of its people, in lieu of the current “Wild West” mentality prevailing today, the people will awake from the 19th Century and unite to build that promised “bridge to the future.” Divisiveness — pharmacists against contraceptives, disloyalty to American families by outsourcing, permitting illegal immigrants to rollback middle class lifestyles, blasé perception of our armed services as mercenaries to further militarism, Dickensian “thousand lights” that never turn on to help the poor, a woman’s personal choice inevitably presumed pro-abortion, lionizing Reagan and W. Bush for accumulating trillions more in national debt than all the other presidents combined and shamelessly the ostensibly wealthiest nation on earth is the biggest debtor, immense tax writeoffs and shelters for the affluent — will ineluctably result in a new revolution, relegating Reaganism back to the century of robber barons.
This current scenario of selfish, god fearing, dictators unto themselves that engender nothing but a severely divided country will regain — not necessarily in this election but soon — through sanity and tranquility the business of “promoting the general welfare” , the prima facie of this nation’s heritage.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: September 16, 2004.
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