OUR NATIONAL BELIEFS
The third area where we see the effects of the anti-hero doctrine is our nation’s beliefs and mores. The Wisdom of Solomon warns us that, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” What we think about on a constant basis will tend to become our reality. Warren Brookes in “Economy in Mind” said:
“Individuals oriented to thoughts of success tend to succeed. Individuals oriented to thoughts of failure and self-doubt tends to fail. As it is with individuals, so it is with nations – which are aggregates of individual thinking. National moods and national preoccupations tend to become national experience and direction. If this is so, the United States may be headed slowly but surely for the poorhouse. In just a few years, national preoccupation with poverty – indeed, the glorification of it – to a surprising degree has replaced Horatio Alger and individual achievement as the national model.”
Compassion is a necessary component of a healthy person, but not a preoccupation with poverty that inevitably leads to national poverty. Real charity is that which is freely given. Otherwise, it is coercion - take from the wealthy for distribution to the poor. Gertrude Himmelfarb in her introduction to Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Memoir on Pauperism” said:
“However noble in its intentions, public charity is fatally flawed, Tocqueville finds, because it denies the most basic fact of human nature: that men will work only to sustain life or to improve their condition. Unfortunately, it is the first motive that impels the vast majority of men, and to deprive them of that by giving them a legal right to charity is to condemn them to a life of idleness and improvidence.”
Government “charity” which treats people as helpless victims only creates more learned helplessness and instills a lack of confidence in the recipients. The liberal leaders of our day promise to cure every ill of the people by creating more government. Henry Link said:
“The leaders of our day achieve popularity because from their easy chairs, they promise the multitude sitting in comfort before their radios, a life of abundance for the simple effort of walking to the voting booth…Our popular leaders sing sweet songs while the characters of a nation crumble. Their tune is: ‘You do not need better personalities, you have me! You do not require stronger character’s, I will give you the abundant life!”
How can the government give the abundant life to everyone when in order to give anything to anyone, it must take something from someone else? The government does not create wealth. It merely redistributes it. De Tocqueville himself said:
“But I am deeply convinced that any permanent, regular administrative system whose aim will be to provide for the needs of the poor will breed more miseries than it can cure, will deprave the population that it wants to help and comfort, will in time reduce the rich to being no more than tenant-farmers of the poor, will dry up the sources of savings, will stop the accumulation of capital, will retard the development of trade, will benumb human industry and activity, and will culminate by bringing about a violent revolution in the State, when the number of those who receive alms will have become as large as those who give it.”
De Tocqueville understood world political history. It has never been more critical for Americans to start seeing the opportunities available to them, like Ronald Reagan did, and not the obstacles Jimmy Carter saw. Our nation stands at a crossroads and our choice is between the road which leads to poverty and victim thinking (the anti-hero), and the road which leads to prosperity and over-coming obstacles (the hero).
