July 12, 2010
Fourth of July has come and gone and left me with a sad feeling. At my age I am not that fascinated by fireworks any more but I love the flag and patriotic songs more than ever. My wife and I watched the old movie about George M. Cohan on the Fourth. I had a few tears when Jimmy Cagney belted out the great Cohan songs, “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and “Over There.”
The sadness comes from realizing I seem to be in a minority today, at least among sophisticated people. In many ways the United States is a far better country today than it was when I was young. Richer, fairer, healthier, less polluted and with far more liberty, prosperity and justice for all. On the other hand it seems to me to be less patriotic, less proud of our heritage and our achievements, including the many that happened in my lifetime.
Think of it. Winning terrible wars against Nazi Germany, Fascist Japan and Totalitarian Soviet Union; bringing a long postponed new measure of freedom and dignity to African-Americans; pioneering a new world of electronics—computers, TV, cell phones, iPads, et al; shattering the “glass ceilings” for women in education, commerce, sports, arts and sciences; raising the living standards of almost all citizens to heights never before seen in human history; increasing life spans from 45 to 79 years; making our air, water and soil cleaner and healthier than ever before; and becoming without question the world leader in bringing many of these benefits to people in just about every country in this still troubled world.
And yet when her husband was nominated for President our own First Lady could only manage a weak hurrah, “for the first time in my adult life, I was proud of my country.” Her husband too has been more prone to apologies than to pride in America’s accomplishments. (See Charles Krauthammer’s recent column in the Washington Post.) Much worse are many professors, like the one at the University of Massachusetts, who claimed, “the American flag is a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression.” Or the professor at the University of New Mexico who commented after the 9/11 attack, “anyone who can blow up the Pentagon gets my vote.” Or the famous Harvard scholar and pop-star on the college lecture circuit, Noah Chomsky, who says “if the Nuremberg trials were applied then every post-war American Presidents would have been hanged.” In my younger days Kate Smith made her fame singing “God Bless America.” Today Reverend Wright became famous by shouting, “God damn America!”
Admittedly most of these folks are at the extreme left end of the political spectrum. But sad to say their influence is stronger than you might think even when watered down. It is especially strong in the all-important world of elite secondary and college classrooms as well as the all-important world of communication stars in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. How many of these influential folks put the flag out on this Fourth of July or sang “You’re a Grand Old Flag?”
Finally, I doubt whether many Hollywood directors would consider making a patriotic movie these days. Instead we get movies like Michael Moore’s Sicko (the star is Fidel Castro) and Capitalism: A Love Story (which of course it was anything but), or Oliver Stone’s JFK, Natural Born Killers and his new South of the Border (the star is Hugo Chavez, the villain is U.S.), or for that matter James Cameron’s popular hit Avatar (starring primitive innocence, villain once again is the American military).
These people need to learn a little history. For instance:
As I mentioned in a previous blog, one of the most significant and progressive actions of the United States in my lifetime does not get anything close to the credit it deserves–the Marshall Plan after World War 2.
In all ages before the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific Revolution and the rise of free-market economics, wealth was a zero-sum game. Wealth was land, gold and slaves, peasants or serfs. All of these things were quite limited so if one person, or one group, got a big piece of the wealth pie another person, or group, would have to be satisfied with a small piece. In order to get more wealth there was only one way – war. If you won the war, to the winner went the spoils–more land, more gold, more slaves. If you lost, tough.
Once the Industrial, Scientific and Free-Market Revolutions came on the scene about two hundred years ago, the calculus changed, but sometimes only in theory. Wealth in a scientific-industrial world was no longer based on land, gold and slaves, but on human creativity. On the ever-increasing and ever-renewable capacity of human beings to innovate, to do more with less, to use the heretofore hidden powers of nature to multiply goods and services without limit. And then to share this new wealth in free-market win-win transactions where both sides profit. When it came to wars, however, the old zero-sum ideas still held sway.
After the First World War, for instance, the winning allies France, Britain and the U.S. were still operating on the old idea that to the winners should go the spoils. Following ancient precedent they stole much of Germany’s wealth in land, resources and productive power. They demanded huge financial reparations that helped to cripple Germany for decades to come. The result was what you might have expected. A bitter and proud people fell for the first demagogue who came along, Adolph Hitler. And so we got World War Two and the Holocaust.
Pretty much the same thing happened here in America after our Civil War. The victorious North led by Radical Republicans made the South suffer. Lincoln would have done it differently, but he was dead. The result was a hundred years of Jim Crow laws and deep poverty throughout the South.
After the Second World War for the first time in human history things changed dramatically. The democratic allies led this time by the United States had finally learned the lesson that wealth was not a limited zero-sum game. Wealth was human creativity and free trade. The best way to assure a peaceful prosperous future for all was not to punish the enemy but to help them recover. That way they could create new wealth that could then be shared with the rest of the world through free trade win-win agreements. (Significantly, one of our war-time allies, the Soviet Union, did not learn the lesson and eventually collapsed itself after punishing East European foes.)
With the Marshall Plan traditional Judeo-Christian ethics (forgive thy enemies, do good to those who hurt you) were able to join hands with free-market economics and scientific creativity to lead the way to a more promising future. Led by former General George Marshall (then the new Secretary of State under President Harry Truman) the United State spent more than a trillion dollars (in inflation-adjusted currency) to help Germany recover from the devastation caused by the war. The result is what you see today. Germany is one of the most prosperous democratic countries in the world and a powerful force for world peace and prosperity. We see the same good news with Japan and Italy.
We are trying to do the same thing today in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Let’s hope we succeed. It wasn’t easy in the much poorer 1940s and it may be even harder today, even though we have a hundred times the resources now.
But that is the power of an idea. And no, we not only have little to apologize for in the United States, we have every reason to be proud of our spectacular successes in that now departed 20th century. And indeed of our efforts in the first decade of the 21st century.
Does past success mean there are no new challenges today? Of course not. But the many strong challenges today—Radical Islam, ballooning deficits, run-away government bureaucracy, soaring unemployment, soaring health care and pension costs, still too much world-wide poverty and disease, energy problems, immigration issues, broken families and even global climate change—are real, but manageable. They are manageable, that is, so long as we have learned the lesson of the Marshall Plan (and for that matter the old Judeo-Christian lesson) of loving your enemies and respecting the power of free-markets and win-win economics.
And in the meantime why not pause once in a while to sing “you’re a grand old flag, you’re a high flying flag, and forever in peace may you wave. You’re the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave.”
Bill Stonebarger, Hawkhill Owner/President
P.S. This time I do go back to my sales pitch. I really think our high schools and colleges need a batch of fresh air to provide our young people with a few facts and liberating lessons from history. We can help. See our up-to-date DVD programs: Democracy in World History, Resources, Populations and Climate Change, Democracy: The Basics, Capitalism and Democracy, Religion and Democracy, Science and Democracy, and last but not least our old but still strong classic, Spaceship Earth.