You may have heard the term “American Exceptionalism”, and if you are old enough you may even remember it. It was the idea that Americans were something special, that there was something about America that made us a little more productive, creative, at the top of the heap in terms of the people of the world.
Every generation tends to think they are the last generation to be worth a damn, and I suppose I need to be wary of that trap. But I must tell you, America is losing whatever exceptionalism we once had. It does seem as though the generation that came after mine has lost it’s way. But if that is true, it certainly did not start with them, but with their parents and grandparents. I think those that raised the Gen X’ers failed somehow. Before I go any further let me acknowledge the fallacy of painting an entire generation of people with the same broad brush. There are some truly great young people out there, working hard and doing great. There are exceptional people, just not that many of them.
Somewhere along the line we quit teaching our kids the right things and people in other areas of the world started teaching their kids the right things. What are the right things? Work hard. Study hard in school. Don’t expect to receive anything you did not earn. Strive for excellence, to be the best. Learning is critical. You are going to have to compete with others around the world. And most importantly, failure is not only a possibility, it is a certainty for those who do not try, who do not do their best.
The bad news: we have a heroin problem. Let that sink in. You have heard it but may not have really acknowledged it. There is a heroin epidemic, and it is in the suburbs as well as the cities. Kids and adults are on heroin and dying from it. People born in the sixties will understand when I say I thought that was over, a stupid thing that once was. Nope, heroin is alive and well. Go to your browser and type in heroin.
After you and your browser are done looking at heroin, type in high school graduation rates. Look up, say St. Louis public schools, or any city, New York, Chicago, Detroit, etc. The graduation rate is 50%. That means half of those kids are not finishing high school. I am not saying they got poor grades and squeaked by. I mean they did not get a high school diploma. President Obama is concerned about student loan interest rates and the rising cost of college. He wants it to be affordable for everyone. Sadly, 50% of students in our city schools cannot go to college regardless. They did not finish high school.
Go back to your browser and take a look at US rankings versus the rest of the world in math and science. I will not belabor the point. We are no longer exceptional. We are 15thor 16th, but at least no child was left behind. Except those that did not graduate and got hooked on heroin. And those that do go to college often end up with a great big pile of student loans and no job offers, so we have more college graduates working low wage jobs than ever before, jobs that would have gone to high school graduates as entry level jobs. Unemployment overall is high, and stubbornly so, but among young people it is staggeringly high, and without a high school diploma it is very difficult to find meaningful employment. A lot of those folks are not even counted, and are living (the lucky ones) in their parents’ basements, playing video games and smoking pot. The unlucky ones, well, I guess they are on heroin.
Before I switch gears and try to convince you this is not the end of the world, let me tell you what I think happened. How did we get here? That topic could likely fill several books but I would say the core of it is motivation. Duh. Why do I have to do my homework? Why do I need to graduate? Why go to college? Why is anything important? I want to play my video games and do my drugs and I don’t like work or school or thinking in general. I don’t value money, because I don’t see why it matters.
We lost our sense of fear. At the same time, the kids growing up in, for example, India, were given a healthy dose of fear. But the kids in India and other places were given something else. A sense that if they did apply themselves, if they did work hard and study and apply themselves, that they could rise above and make a better life for themselves and their kids.
The current debates going on in the US with regard to privacy and liberty and immigration and entitlement have really shed some light on what may be wrong with our country. American Exceptionalism was never about our genetics. We were not exceptional because of who we are, or who our parents were. We had an exceptional SYSTEM in this country. Our laws and our culture rewarded hard work and creativity, and yes, punished laziness and complacency. We were born of a set of principles that shunned classes of people. We had no kings or nobility, or for that matter peasant classes. Any man who worked hard and made a better mouse trap could succeed here. We laughed at those who thought they were entitled, such as the children of the wealthy, because we knew that within a generation their wealth would be gone, squandered, if the driving force that created it passed away.
Our system, our republic, was based on democratic principles and free market capitalism. At it’s core was Liberty, the freedom of the common man to pursue his own self interest without interference. That one concept propelled this nation to what was accurately dubbed American Exceptionalism. We became great; not all of us, but as a nation we did great things and rose to the top of the world and we deserved it. And those that worked and created and built and thought also improved the standard of living not only for themselves, but also their fellow Americans. The rising tide lifted all boats.
Well, not ALL boats. Some people observed that there was still poverty, and still people suffered. And they wanted to do something about it. The Great Depression hurt a lot of people. My parents were born during the Great Depression, and they learned fear. Fear of real hunger. As a result they became savers, and frugal, and ambitious, and hard working. They knew what was at stake in a way I never could. They had seen a poverty I have never seen. But having seen it, they would not tolerate laziness or lack of effort on my part. They insisted that I would not only graduate high school but go to college. And although we snuck out to drink a beer here and there we had to sneak because it was not to be tolerated in the house I grew up in. I will call this second hand fear.
Unfortunately, third hand fear is not very effective. I have never been hungry unless I was dieting on purpose. I have never been wealthy but have never known poverty. My children are good kids and successful, but not because of fear. They cannot picture a Great Depression. And neither can their generation. Not only have their parents (we) always been there to pick them up, their government has been in hyperdrive in making sure nothing bad ever happens to it’s citizens.
Changing gears from the personal to the cultural, from Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson to Barak Obama, we have been steadily moving toward the idea that we will provide a safety net for everyone. Social Security was sold as a retirement plan and safety net for our seniors. The reality is that we took the money but spent it on roads and bridges and wars and conferences. It is empty. LBJ’s Great Society was designed to expand on what Roosevelt envisioned and provide a social safety net for everyone. Barak Obama has presided over the greatest expansion of food stamps ever.
And lest I appear completely partisan, I will reserve my greatest critique for one George W. Bush. I like the guy. He was well intentioned. But he introduced prescription drug coverage, without paying for it. He presided over the Patriot Act, to keep us all safe, so we would not have to be afraid after 9-11-2001. But most egregious was what he did in 2008 to “save the economy”. He “saved” GM and Chrysler, and all the banks, and all of the companies that should have failed. He did not let companies fail. He did not let people get hurt as a result of their actions.
For those who complain about the rich getting richer, we might want to blame George W. Bush. You see, when you do not let free market capitalism run it’s course, you eliminate fear. The CEO’s were very afraid because they knew they were borrowing money to make payroll. The Wall Street traders were afraid because they had been speculating. Boards of Directors were shaking in their boots. Bankers had made stupid investments on shaky but lucrative real estate deals. George Bush saved them all at our expense. And that was a horrible decision, perhaps the worst.
Fear is what motivates us. Fear keeps us honest and keeps us from doing stupid things. There is no fear without pain, the pain that comes with failure. The pain of the Great Depression that made the Greatest Generation what it was, and made my parents demand that I do my homework. We must not interfere with the pain that might have woken up an entire generation and kept them from discovering heroin. And the pain that for example, Ben Bernanke is trying to avoid as we speak by printing money out of thin air. He wants to control things so nobody feels pain, but he is playing God and interfering with what should rightly be. The Fed is interfering in the process that produces exceptional people and businesses and trying to make everyone safe from failure and pain.
We must stop trying to control things from above and let the natural flow of motivation and stupidity take care of itself; it is self correcting and, yes, painful. But it is unerring and always works out in the end. There is no such thing as too big or too small to fail. Failure is how we learn. I have hope for the future if we realize the value of that which made this country exceptional; but that will require a change. We must let those who make bad decisions fail, whether they are corporate titans or lazy Gen X’ers in their parent’s basements. We must reward those who try hard and work hard and put forth effort. We do not have to micromanage this, our system was already set up to produce exceptional results, the best ever. We need to just remove the modifications we have made to try to protect everyone. Pain must be the natural result of bad decisions, or our people will not be exceptional.
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