NYTimes op-ed columnist Paul Krugman writes articles that seem to be getting more and more desperate. Cool-headed Americans must appreciate the result of our administration's policies causing fiscal conservancy to be the new big thing (again). As elections draw near, we are seeing more and more right-wing sentiment - one could call it bigotry - being implemented in Republican campaigning. The Tea Party claims to possess the same agenda and principles that our founding founders made fundamental when working on project America. But aside from fiscal conservancy, did they not also advocate for social liberty, or at least plant the seeds for a unified people, each person imbued with the same rights as the other? And did not Alexander Hamilton, our nation's first secretary of the treasury, advocate for a pragmatic approach to stabilizing America - that is, possessing more centralized power, perhaps having knowledge of the irrationality of the masses, let alone human beings? We see that Democrats and Republicans both echo different values our founding fathers possessed. The Republican party's identity has degenerated - thanks to Bush Jr, his administration's wartime blunders, and the past 20 years of Friedman/Rand-esque financial market liberty and greed. But now, globalization and foreign trade has changed the entire nature of politics. Global terms of trade. Debt, to name a few.
Past the Cold War, we no longer have a common enemy that we can point the finger at. In the past generation, mob mentality fueled anti-Communist sentiment. Capitalism was Americanism. Americanism was capitalism. And now, to witness a declining America - a multi-ethnic America where WASP elites are now sensing a threat to their own seats of power - and to see the big whigs taking action with a very visible hand is disturbing to them. Economic contraction is appropriate, they feel. But pragmatic contraction would be even better, for shrinking our economy relative to the world market. We have no exit strategy. We just never expected that there would be repercussions for the collective practice of living beyond our means.
One thing that comes to mind is what Obama said: "History never precisely repeats itself"
Not blind to his inevitable perceived shortcomings upon taking up the presidency, Mr. Spock knew that change would not happen overnight. It would be politically impossible to deliver fulfilled promises in two years, let alone appease the masses expectations of those promises. But he sure gave us hope, didn't he?
Continuing on w/ the history lesson and my point - Heavily in debt, following the Revolutionary War, America was in a similar position to the one we are living in now. We live in a crucial time in which we need to prove to the world that we are sustainable. Beyond numbers and troubled finances, we must again show the world that we have the potential to be sustainable, if not in certain sectors of industry (what industries?). It would be wishful thinking to believe that we can return to being no. 1. Yet, if America made it this far, would it not be strange to believe that we can continue? It's crucial that we don't turn back on the social values that have done so much to be inclusive. Aside from economic woes, which apparently every nation has, we must sustain as much grace as we possibly can so that we do not degenerate into a country with the face of bigotry.
