Economics and Timeline: Character Deficit

Dinner Topics for Tuesday: Economics without Character

 

 “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” The now-trite phrase from the Clinton Era still doesn’t answer some nagging questions. Exactly what is “stupid”? And, is the economy only about money?

 

The answer to the multi-trillion dollar question of what is “stupid” is obvious. But what happens when the economy is only about money? 

History gives us many examples, for which there is room here to give a few.

1789

Unlike the American Revolution, which was about liberty, the French revolution, put simply, was about vengeance of poverty against wealth. Certainly, not all the “noble” class had noble character. On the other hand, a small but sufficient number of the peasant class possessed so little good character that they became mass murderers. The result was the death of thousands of innocent people, including children, and destruction of a huge portion of the French culture. Why? For money.

1939-45

In addition to the obviously racially and politically motivated Holocaust, Hitler and his regime had thousands of elderly people and birth-defective babies murdered. Why? The State did not want to allocate necessary money to keep them alive.

Christmas Eve, 2009

President Obama's administration, together with a spineless Congress forced the first phases of Obamacare into law, using un-Constitutional means. Why? Money, and power. The result: destruction of the Constitution and people’s liberty.

March 7, 2011

Dr. Daphne Austin, British socialist health care official, said that 23-week premature babies should be left to die. Why? “We’re spending an awful lot of money on treatments” for them. (Blaze.com)

March, 2011

Madison, Wisconsin. Governor Scott Walker, manifesting the restraint of frugal character, tried to increase responsibility in the management of his state’s budget. Some of the changes affected unionized public-sector jobs, only to place some features on a more equal scale with those jobs in the private sector, held by taxpayers. Union mobs, surely not representing all union members, issued death threats, verbal abuse, and injury to persons who disagreed with them, and stormed the state capitol, leaving a wake of filth, trash, and destruction costing millions of dollars to repair or clean up. Why? Money, and greed.

What is the missing factor in each of the above economic “equations?” Character. The list of examples would fill volumes. It is an unalterable lesson of history: a national economy without character ends in destruction.

Copyright © 2011 by C.A. Davidson