Ideas in Flight

I don't suppose there could be a better day all year to start off a post by talking about public transportation – even though that will turn out not to be the main thrust of the discussion. But I have to credit public transportation with at least serving as a muse in this case. There's nothing like standing in an airport security line to get one thinking... like, how did things come to this sorry pass? I thought we were living in the “land of the free”, etc. (As a sidebar, I should comment that airport security is, for most middle-class people, the first opportunity they have to experience the “America” that the lower classes experience on a daily basis – a landscape of frowns, suspicion, paranoia, random searches and friskings, obtrusive questioning, etc. And this, I submit, is what has airline passengers – the vast majority of whom are middle-class – the most upset. They feel they are being treated inappropriately for their social status, not on an absolute basis.)

I'm old enough to remember what might be termed the “golden age” of air travel – or at least its twilight years. In those times, you could walk right up to the gate even if you weren't “ticketed”, either to greet someone or see someone off. The airlines served hot meals on real china and with real silverware and linen – not some poor imitation of fast-food carry-out, with everything embalmed in plastic bubbles. And on the first jumbo jets – ah, the memories! -- there was a bar at the top of the winding staircase from which even the “coach class” passenger could look out, in a leisurely and luxurious way, upon the moving landscape.

Now, this is not to say there was not a downside – the main one being the absurd custom of having “smoking” and “non-smoking” sections on a sealed airplane. Whoever thought that up has to have his bust included in a pantheon of marketing geniuses – but he'll certainly never win any awards from the American Lung Association.

But those days are gone with the wind, and now all but the most privileged must stand in a line fit for refugees from some Eastern European conflict – gray and dismal, punctuated only by crying babies and the occasional outburst from a fed-up passenger. And of course the TSA personnel, like everyone else who experiences real power for the first time, lord it over the crowd like concentration camp guards, tripping you up with ever-changing, arbitrary, and senseless rules. Not only are no two airports alike when it comes to security provisions, but it turns out that no two security lines are alike! The randomness works itself down to the smallest and most trivial details – and it's all designed to keep people off balance, to render them helpless in the face of authority.

So really – aside from the privileged few, as I said – air travel is no longer a pleasure, but is a gigantic pain in the ass, if you'll pardon my French. Not that train travel is a whole lot better – I mean, there are no luggage restrictions and no security lines, and the seats are larger, and there is more leg room, but the food is execrable, the schedules are surreally sparse and bad, and American trains have the curious habit of running hours (or even days) late, even though weather is, to say the least, not quite the factor it is with air travel. And then there is bus travel... and I'll spare you the horrors of contemporary bus stations, all of which seem to be situated in the very worst parts of town. And... well, really, so much for public transportation! Americans, who value the freedom to travel far above all other freedoms, are more assaulted and mistreated when it comes to travel than anyone in Europe and a good proportion of people in Asia. We sit over here in this benighted desert of public transportation turning green with envy every time we contemplate the transportation systems of Europe, Japan, and (increasingly) China. They somehow managed to make it happen – but we couldn't manage it with all the money in the world; therein lies the mystery.

I suppose that, in an odd kind of way, public transportation represents, for most Americans, a kind of capitulation – a giving up of the real thing, travel-wise, which means the freedom to drive one's own car wherever and whenever one pleases. Compared to that, all other forms seem vaguely socialistic, somehow – compromises. I mean, would Jack Kerouac have written “On the Road” about bus travel? Would “Easy Rider” have been the same if it had happened on a train? “Travels With Charley” on airplanes? No – the whole thing is absurd, a violation of a big part of the American dream. What began as a simple, practical means of colonization, settlement, and the movement west gradually morphed into an American ideal and icon; the closing of the frontier did not end the American urge for movement, it only forced it to morph in a different direction. Rather than “heading west” we now head, basically, wherever we aren't at present. Americans are restless and migratory – and it's no accident that this characterizes a society built primarily on ideas rather than a sense of place. Because to think of America-in-general as a place, we have to be motivated not by a reality, but by an idea of America – by a myth, in other words. When people think of a real place, they think of a home town, a neighborhood, a farm – not an entire country, and seldom even an entire state. People who think in those latter terms are likely to be “rootless cosmopolitans” -- to resurrect an old expression – who may or may not be deracinated (i.e. deprived of racial, ethnic, and religious roots, either voluntarily or by force) but who certainly have no loyalty or consideration for the land. Even the old-time wanderers, hobos, “rolling stones” -- celebrated in song and story – were “from” somewhere. (They often had nicknames that included their point of origin, like Cincinnati Red.) What we have now is a nation of people, many of whom are from nowhere – I mean, they had to have grown up somewhere, but they have no sense of place, either past or present. And it's hardly necessary to point out that the great American suburb is the worst place, and the most aggravating factor, for this sense of rootlessness... of “nowhereness”. And sure enough, when the central planners and “urban renewal” enforcers wanted to deracinate and demoralize a given racial/ethnic/religious group, where did they send them (or force them to go)? Why, to the suburbs, of course! A different city neighborhood, or even a small town, might have enabled them to keep some of their culture and sense of identity intact, and surely we can't have that.

So in a sense, the current, residual fetish for travel that infects Americans is a symptom of this deracination and displacement – an endless and futile search for that which is lost. Who knows? It might be just around the next corner, or over the next hill. So the quest goes on – and we wind up in a state of despair that does not know it is despair, to use an expression from Kierkegaard. There are many American pathologies, and this may not even be the most severe, but it certainly has a huge impact on our sense of being and identity as individuals and as a people.

But let's return to our cozily depressing and humiliating security line for a moment. A young traveler won't notice that anything has changed; he or she will assume it has always been this way, and might vaguely wonder why, but decide not to worry about it – the way most people simply accept the fact that there are always long lines at the DMV. (Imagine the shock and disorientation of a typical Russian who woke up one morning after the breakup of the Soviet Union and found that he didn't have to stand in line 3 or 4 hours to buy a loaf of bread!)

But for people like me, who remember the “golden age”, questions arise. The TSA was supposedly formed to guard against “further terrorist attacks” -- and if you look at the numbers, you might almost think they were succeeding, except for all the newspaper articles that point out repeated failures (most of which have non-fatal consequences, at least). You can only credit something with success if you can count the number of times it has kept something bad from happening – and this is, of course, impossible with an outfit like the TSA. For all I know, they have been successful – wildly so. But there is no way of proving it, so it quickly sinks into the usual bureaucratic quicksand and starts to exist for the sake of existence, like most other government agencies. My theory, as I've explained before, is that 9/11 was “mission accomplished” for the “terrorists”, or whoever was responsible, and that it doesn't need to happen again – no repeat performance necessary, since we are being bled white by endless wars in the Middle East, our economy is in a shambles, and our national morale is on life support. What better reward could any enemy hope to gain than that? The events of 9/11 did not bring down the American Empire in a single blow... but our actions since that date have served just as well, if not better. The terrorists didn't have to lift a finger to do anything else over here; all they have to do is keep things hot in the Middle East, and they have their revenge for all real and imagined offenses by America over the years. If, by a single act, you can get your enemy to destroy itself – well, that has to rank as one of the cleverest tactics ever devised... and yet it seems to be working. (And in fact, it works no matter who was ultimately responsible for 9/11; the model is “robust”, as they say in statistics.)

So OK, if our security-line woes are the fault of TSA, and if their existence is the fault of “terrorists” (or whoever), and the trigger for all of it was the 9/11 attacks, then what caused those? The best answer, still, is the one provided by Ron Paul, which caused Rudy Giuliani to suffer an apoplectic fit right on stage: “They're over here because we're over there.” OK then, why are we over there? And this is where the arguments bifurcate. Some will say the necessary and sufficient reason is the “defense” of Israel (a euphemism for “fighting their wars for them”). Others will say it's oil. Others, a combination of the two; neither one would have been sufficient for us to make that much of an investment. To which I have to add, there is also the factor of a new Crusade – this time preached by the Protestants – a new war on Islam, which might not hinge on either Israel or oil as essential elements. This might sound unlikely, but have a look at what is coming out of the intelligence agencies and the military commands these days – a relentless propaganda campaign (for the morale of the troops, of course) that says nothing about either Israel or oil, but plenty about Islam – not just as a source of “terrorism” but as an evil in its own right. Yes, this is actually being preached to military personnel and intelligence personnel, with the help of “advisors” from the Evangelical community – to which I say, whatever happened to “the wall of separation between church and state”? I think the answer is that the warfare is asymmetrical, in that it involves a secular state (us) against a religion (Islam). So “terrorism” is the excuse, but religion is the basic motive – for us as well as for them. Notice what a hard time we have deciding how, when, and where to try “terrorists”? It's because we can't decide what their status is, and that's because we can't decide what sort of conflict we're engaged in, and that's because there is no provision in the Constitution for wars of religion – and yet that's what we're fighting.

So in a broad sense – and as Ron Paul's statement implied – 9/11 was a self-inflicted wound. Some form, or aspect, of American empire building had inexorably led to it – and once it occurred, what was our response? To rethink our foreign policy and our overseas military and economic adventures? Not a bit of it. Our response was, predictably, to double down on our “commitments” overseas, or – to put it another way – everywhere but at home. The surest sign of a dying empire is that the citizenry starve while the military prospers, even in the most remote, out-of-the-way locales. This process did not start with 9/11, but those events solidified the pattern and established the process as one which is unstoppable until it leads to utter destruction. And sure, we will have our Mideast oil for a while, and will “defend” Israel for a while, but in the long run it is all doomed. That is, if we follow the trajectory of every other empire known to history – and what makes us think we have the will or the power to be any different? But it's another trait of empires to perpetually think, “we're different” -- we can dodge fate, we can sidestep karma. Yet it's that very attitude that accelerates the process of destruction, decay, and annihilation.

And I might mention as another sidebar the latest farce to come down the pike, namely our supposed “getting tough” with China – on economic, financial, trade, and “human rights” issues. When I was over there recently, I couldn't help but notice that every map of the country included the South China Sea, with a scattering of islands. Yes, they are totally convinced that that is their territory, and to heck with any “law of the sea” treaties. So now we are about to challenge them on this, as well as some other things? We, who owe China trillions in national debt? We, who can't keep a lid on two completely-wrecked countries in the Middle East, are now about to challenge China for dominance in East Asia? A country made up of sane people would immediately move to lock up anyone who came up with an idea this crazy – but when everybody's insane, only the few sane ones get that sort of treatment.

But really, it's all just huffing and puffing – no genuine confrontation with China is contemplated, simply because none is possible, and it wouldn't work; we'd just make fools of ourselves. What counts is not the reality, but the playacting, and I suspect that China is complicit in all this. In other words, they are perfectly willing to allow us to blow off steam once in a while, just as we allow them to – as long as nothing comes of it, which it never does. I mean, when's the last time they took our advice... on anything? All they have to do is wave that huge I.O.U. in our faces, and the conversation comes to a screeching halt. And yet it's considered politically expedient to mouth words once in a while... like we insist on having a “presence” in East Asia and in the Pacific. Well, fine – we can have all the “presence” we want, as long as it doesn't alter the power structure. Can't you see that it's nothing more than a desperation move to distract people from our abject failures in the Middle East? (Not to mention from our economic woes.) Oh yes, by all means – let's expand the American empire, already in its death throes, to another entire area of the globe. It's pathetic, really.

But there's another question I want to deal with here, and it goes back to my excellent adventure in the airport security line. Given that the events of 9/11 took a good chunk out of the American dream – or maybe woke us up from it, at least temporarily – what, precisely, is it that we have lost? And I don't mean the convenience of air travel; that's much too superficial an issue. There is a widespread feeling that we have lost some of “what it means to be an American” -- not just in convenience but in self-image and self-respect, not to mention various "freedoms" and "rights". The biggest worry is that we might, someday, become “just another country”, just another place on the map, with no extraordinary charism... no mandate to go and conquer the world in the name of “democracy” or some other idea. Now, you'll notice that we're talking about ideas here, and only ideas – not anything tangible that people traditionally value... things like race, ethnicity, religion... and “place”, as I discussed above. Nothing really “died” on 9/11; our innocence was long gone (thanks to Vietnam etc.). But what suffered a stunning blow was our notion that just having the right “ideas” was enough – enough to merit our claim to world domination (politically and economically). It turned out that there was a big, wide world out there that didn't give a fig for our ideas, but preferred either its own, or (perhaps worse) no ideas at all. That was one blow. And the next was, again, self-inflicted – the fact that, in order to defend ourselves against “terrorism”, we had to start canceling the freedoms that the “terrorists” supposedly despise... the very reason they attacked us, in fact! Because they hate our freedom! (This either sounded absurd when Bush said it, but sounds reasonable when Obama says it, or vice versa, depending on your party affiliation.) So they attacked us because they hate our freedoms, with the result that we were forced to give up some of those freedoms, which means they win! Right? But, of course, that wasn't the reason they attacked us at all, and only the most shameless demagogue would claim that it is.

But aside from this massive exercise in irony, it must be admitted that we are, indeed, a different country than we were in those – now seemingly cheerful, innocent, and sepia-toned – days prior to 9/11. We have lost some obvious things, but some less obvious things as well. With each stunning blow – starting at least as far back as the Civil War – we lose another piece of our self-image and, truth be told, our self-esteem... although the latter effect can be indefinitely delayed through the use of bluster, propaganda, and military adventures. And why is this such a bad thing? After all, every nation suffers setbacks from time to time. Our problem is that we have nothing to fall back on; if our ideas fail, and if our ideals turn out to have feet of clay, we are devastated. This nation was founded with, among other things, an explicit mandate to do away with all of the old verities – things like race, ethnicity, and religion (of the confessional, vs. deistic, kind) – and replace them with ideas. So the “American character”, of which much has been made over the years, has no real solid basis; it's one part abstraction and one part accident. We fancy that we are, as a people, what we say, or think, we are – but all of those ideas are easily disproven by historical evidence as well as current events. The beauty of the old verities was that one could identify with them without their having to be perfect, or without the act of identification having to be perfect. A bad Frenchman was still a Frenchman, in other words – whereas a bad American is really not an American at all, since he has failed to live up to an abstract and impossible-to-achieve ideal. You can't go home again if there is no such place.

And national character – when founded on the old verities – had a funny way of surviving even the severest tests. Frenchmen were no less French after their revolution than they were before, even though that revolution was the most idea-laden event in history. The Russians were certainly no less Russian after their own revolution, or after their own reign of terror... and I found out, by first-hand observation, that the Chinese are still very much Chinese, despite all the best efforts of Mao and his Cultural Revolution. In other words, if there is one strong thing in human history, it is national (or regional, tribal, whatever) character, which is a composite of race, ethnicity, and religion as well as language, the arts, and countless other traditions, customs, mores, habits, and so forth. And yet, in the name of “ideas”, we have been more than willing – anxious, even – to give all of this up for the sake of becoming some kind of universal, generic exemplar of “democracy” or “freedom” (as we define it). And if the long-term goal of our revolution, and our founding, was to turn out a race of deracinated, culturally-sterile androids, we have succeeded to a great extent. This pure American type – a counterpart to the New Soviet Man – is alive and well (so to speak) in all American suburbs, and in other enclaves of the middle class. Their strength is that they have no loyalty to anything but ideas. Their weakness is... well, the same as their strength. As long as the ideas remain on the winning side, all is well – but when things start to fall apart, what is there to cushion the fall? Nothing, really – and this is the real source of the middle class's current spasm of discontent, as expressed in the “tea party” movement. The secular god we have been worshiping for all these many years has failed... the scales are falling from many eyes... and people are realizing they've been robbed. They traded the birthright of every man down through history – the right to pride of place and of belonging to a group defined by objective criteria – for a mess of ideational pottage that, as it turns out, most of the people in charge never believed in anyway. They were, in other words, fooled, duped, and misled by a bunch of cynics – and they continue to be! Nothing has changed except that the consciousness of a few has been expanded a bit. But they will soon be swamped and carried back into the vast sea of ignorance and subservience that everyone else calls home.

The Dismal Tide

My nomination for quote of the week – or maybe the month – is this, from Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles (in the January issue): “The true American character was forged in danger and hardship and bitter necessity, but that character has been diluted by mass immigration and weakened by the very success it achieved. The weakness of our character was revealed by the number of people who, against all reason, voted for Barack Obama, because they were afraid. The majority of mankind, however, is always made up of weak and frightened people. It has always been an elite... who have defined the real America.” And by “the elite”, he clearly means the strong, independent, and self-sufficient – not to be confused with the “elite” of our time, who are just the biggest, most bloated parasites.

And it's true, I suppose, that the ruling “feeling tone” of most people in most societies at most times in history has been fear – and that fear has been directed at their own rulers as often as at any external threat. If you accept the model of societies being formed from the ground up for mutual protection, then it would seem that fear of “the other” came first – fear of the tribe in the next valley, the raiders from the next village, the pirates showing up on the shore. But once a society is organized, vested interests develop in its staying organized, and with the same power structure. I.e., once the crisis has passed, whatever serves as the “government” will not wither away as some might like; it will stay in place, supposedly as insurance against subsequent threats, but mainly because the people in charge want it that way, and they are able to influence sufficient numbers of others to cooperate and support their position. So you get the “chief” or warlord, sitting on a hand-carved wooden throne surrounded by his retainers – i.e. goons. And if he's doing his job, he is indeed protecting the tribe, group, or village against invaders. But the price he exacts is that, when there are no threats from without, he stays in office – thus “domestic fear” -- fear of the government – is substituted for fear of the invader. And as societies develop, one can expect that this alternation of sources of fear will eventually be replaced by a hybrid system of all fear, all the time -- perpetual fear of invaders (whether justified or not) combined with perpetual fear of the government.

And this is, lo and behold, precisely what we have today. We certainly have fear of invaders – AKA “terrorists” -- to justify any and all military activity anywhere in the world (not to mention the economic and social consequences). And as for fear of the government, seek no further than the IRS. Of course, domestic fear, American style, is not a simple affair; it's cloaked in many layers of deceit and dissimulation. And yet, behind every government program, regulation, or law, there's an “or else” -- either explicit or implied. The hypocrisy comes in when the program, regulation, or law is presented as being “for your own good” -- i.e. for the good of the citizenry, either as individuals or as part of some arbitrarily defined group. But one always has to ask, if this provision is such a good idea, and if any reasonable person will agree that it is, why does there always have to be an “or else”? And the reason is that most of these programs, regulations, and laws are _not_ good ideas; they serve the interests of a select few, and harm the interests of the many. But under our system of rotating bribes, every once in a while you get to grab at the golden ring – i.e. it's your turn to be bribed, and one of the conditions of the bribe is that you have to shut up about everyone else's bribes. And then the propaganda apparatus broadcasts the myth that everyone has come out ahead on the deal -- even when we see that the government itself winds up with the lion's share -- and the deception is complete.

But none of this would work if it weren't for the basic groundwork of fear. And as much as people talk about “freedom”, no one wants to accept the downside of freedom, which is risk. So our freedoms gradually turn into dross, for the simple reason that, in the process of eliminating all risk, we have to eliminate all real freedom; this is an iron law of both politics and economics, although very few people are willing to admit it. So regardless of the government's motives for restricting freedom – which are almost always malevolent, even when they include a patina of “progressivism” -- the end result is always the same, and what I call “domestic fear” is one of the main factors holding the system in place. And this, in turn, is why “education” and the media, are so important to the program – because, in our time, fear is rarely of the bonafide, primitive, adrenalin-laden type; it resides primarily in the world of ideas. And who is in charge of the planting and nurturing of ideas in the skulls of the citizenry? Why, the public schools and the media, of course. So this is why a goodly proportion of any public school curriculum, or media programming, will have a high fear content; the citizenry must be made to feel both threatened and helpless so that it will continue to run to government and lay its few remaining freedoms at the feet of its “leaders”. And, by the same token, any upstarts who start preaching about liberty, or the need for independent thinking, have to be suppressed without mercy.

But Fleming clearly does not imagine that the American character has always been this corroded, corrupted, and degenerate. He clearly believes that what served as the foundation of this country, and what sustained it for a good period of time, was rugged independence – a historically rare thing, apparently. Well, when you think about it, how much “rugged individualism” do we see, or read about, in history? There are plenty of heroes – but a hero is not necessarily an individualist, any more than a military leader or politician is. A hero may simply be the one who is at the front of the band at a given time – the most aggressive, the loudest, the strongest, the most ruthless. But his power is derived mainly, if not entirely, from his position in the group; he might not fare any better going off on his own than any of his followers. Think of the true individualist in the American tradition – the “lone gun”, the homesteader, the trapper, the desert rat of song and story. That is a true American type, and a type rarely to be found anywhere else, at any other time in history. What was it about this place, and this time, that gave rise to, and rewarded, individuals of this type? That would be the topic for a few good books, which I'm not prepared to write just now. But suffice it to say that that rare window in time which was open for a few generations now seems to be closed again – slammed shut, in fact, by the powers that be – the government and the ruling elite. They are, as I've said before, reaping what they did not sow – the last fruits, if you will, of the true American character and his works... his legacy.

But what he built up has been corrupted and distorted beyond recognition. If one knew nothing of American history, one could not even begin to guess as to its chief features by surveying the America of today. Oh, I suppose that one could listen to the propaganda spewed forth by politicians and by speakers at Memorial Day ceremonies, or fed to schoolchildren... but if all one did was observe, one would never guess. What one would see would be a lazy, sensual, decadent, spendthrift, impulsive, delusional, short-tempered, warlike people who use up resources far more rapidly than they can be replaced, and who think that it's their business to interfere with the affairs of every other nation on earth -- who think, in fact, that despite their manifest character flaws, they possess some sort of moral superiority. One would see a bizarre form of nationalism based on a concept of “nation” that is ill-defined, fragmented, divorced from history, and has little or no basis in reality. One would see a political process by which every man is trying to gain an advantage over all others, and, as a result, winds up being exploited by those who are in control – and who, in fact, winds up further behind than if he'd just minded his own business.

And if one were told that the mythical Founding Fathers – with all of their immortal thoughts, speeches, and writings – were still considered our direct forebears, politically and philosophically... well, the only proper response to that would be uproarious laughter. It would be clear that what intervened between them and us, between then and now, was plain old human nature and concupiscence – that the best plan, the best-designed government on earth could not insulate people against their own weaknesses, foolishness, and greed... and that while America might, in fact, have been the most noble experiment in government of all time, even it had its limits, and those limits are long past.

And this is, I suppose, the issue when it comes to responding to idea like Fleming's. Was “the true American character” a happy accident – a flash in the pan – the product of a specific time and place, never to be repeated? And is what we have now – drearily like most other societies down through history – the “normal”, the baseline? In other words, which is the figure, and which is the ground? Fleming, who I would never accuse of being an optimist, nonetheless seems to feel that as long as there is a remnant – a few righteous men – America and the American spirit can never be wholly annihilated. Well, it's true that ideas can survive as a thin, underground stream for many generations without ever appearing on the surface of a society or having any impact on it... but I'm not convinced that that's inevitable. For one thing, how do we know how many “lost ideas” there have been down through history? (If we knew, they wouldn't be lost, would they?) We know that much of what civilization has produced has been lost over time; history is full of references to great works of which no trace remains. And when it comes to political ideas – I say again, can any of them ever stand up, indefinitely, to the corrosive effects of human nature? Won't we always be regressing to the primitive, tribal baseline, where the strong man and his goons rule over everyone else? (Isn't that what we have come back to in our own time?) Won't fear always be the default setting? We see in our current system, as complex and convoluted as it is, that it ultimately all boils down to fear – fear that is generated and manipulated by the ruling elite, and felt by the masses.

There might have been one brief moment in American history – the so-called Progressive Era – when fear was not the main political medium of exchange. For a while there it seemed as if government could actually do some good – albeit in an extra-Constitutional sense – in areas like public health, food safety, drug safety, workplace safety, fair wages... you know, all those great old causes that blossomed in the pre-World War I era. Now granted, there was, arguably, a basis in fear for all of these programs as well; I'm talking about a matter of emphasis. The operational definition of a “progressive” might be found in a quote by Robert Kennedy -- “I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” This is, let's admit, an optimistic point of view – one looks at the status quo and imagines that things could be better... that improvements could be made. And, if one is “progressively” inclined, one imagines that the government is the most fitting agent to make those improvements. It's not that things are all that bad now... but they could be better.

But is this the attitude of the government at present? Is this the “feeling tone” that is being projected? No – it's more like, “Things are terrible now, and we're all helpless and doomed, and government is our only hope... and still, we'll be lucky just to survive, and even luckier if all we do is break even.” In other words, you lower expectations to the point that no one can ever be disappointed. Compared to the sunny, cheerful message of the progressives, this sounds like some black-robed figure ringing the chimes of doom with bats flitting overhead against a stormy sky. In other words, the “fear dial” has been turned up to a high volume, and it just keeps getting higher with each passing day – and not without reason! Things really are getting worse on almost all counts – but the main culprit in all of this is not "the other" -- not terrorism or global warming or any of the other boogeymen du jour -- but government itself. Can you think of a single current “crisis” on any front that did not originate in – or was not at least aggravated by -- some cynical or ill-conceived government policy, regulation, or law? And yet it's always government that is called in – by unanimous plea of the citizenry – to fix what government wrought in the first place... and thus the poison is concentrated to the point where it has to become fatal. And so we have a gradual evolution from government being, at most, part of the solution to its becoming part of the problem, to its becoming _the_ problem. But again, none of this would have been possible without a corresponding, parallel degeneration of the American character. A free people would never have put up with a fraction of the high-jinks that government has been committing down through the years. But what has eroded that freedom more than anything else? Not the law, not oppression, and not plagues, wars, and disasters, but fear. And that, in turn, counts as a bloodless victory for the forces of totalitarianism – to render an entire population afraid of its own shadow, even in the midst of, arguably, plenty of residual prosperity and token freedoms – this is, truly, a prodigious feat. And yet it has been carried off, and with remarkable efficiency – since each succeeding generation has a much lower “fear threshold” than the one before. People of my parents' generation would have scoffed in disgust at what now passes as a “crisis”, or as “poverty”, for example. And yet, I imagine that we're tougher – in all of our cry-baby self-pity – than the generations to follow. I would like to know just how weak Americans can become before they cease to exist at all! I suppose that eventually they will all turn into benumbed slaves whose only source of energy is sheer biological survival instinct – not unlike concentration camp inmates (and even there, inner strength was a powerful predictor of survival). And this, of course... or so one would think... would be a fate to be feared much more than anything that is now causing us to give up our freedoms. I mean, there really are some things worse then death, aren't there? Like death of the spirit, for example? And yet, to see the trends in current events, that seems to be the least of our worries.