More A Decline of the Spirit? by Victor Davis Hanson

Too many of us grow up without any need of physical labor, much less enduring the monotony of hard work, and so do not respect those who clean our toilets or produce our food or cut our timber—or think we should ever have to endure such an indignity ourselves. We know nothing of nature, and therefore romanticize it rather than develop a guarded respect for its fury and cruelty.

There are lots of ways to lament America’s current financial and cultural dilemmas. We borrow to satisfy our entitlement appetites; we do not fully develop our natural riches, especially gas and oil on federal lands, as if regulating is more important than producing them; we do not honor the law, seeking either to overturn it through an activist judiciary or simply bypass it by executive orders (or ignore it out of politically-correct, ends-justify-the-means smugness). There is a general sense that there are no consequences to much of anything these days: radios blare ads about how to get out of mortgage debt, IRS debt, credit card debt (as if “they” put a gun to our heads to borrow); the farm bill provides for nearly 50 million on food stamps, many who by past standards would not qualify, and gives direct payments to agribusiness at a time of record-high commodity prices. One earns more disdain by trying to enforce immigration law than by breaking it.

Behind these symptoms are lots of larger pathologies. Postmodern relativism — itself a natural outgrowth of Marxism — has infected even the primary schools, as truth and right are not absolute but become fluid and depend on matters of race, class, and gender. High technology has given us all sorts of stuff that fooled us into thinking that our ability to text message or play video simulations means that somehow we are educated or exceptional when we are not. Enforced sameness is now the role of government run by technocrats who are exempt from their own equality-of-result ideas.

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