PJ O'Rourke -- Of Thee I Sigh

[Azazello1313]

pretty solid

My sad generation of baby boomers can be blamed. We were born into an America where material needs were fulfilled to a degree unprecedented in history. We were a demographic benison, cherished and taught to be self-cherishing. We were cosseted by a lush economy and spoiled by a society grown permissive in its fatigue with the strictures of depression and war. The child being father to the man, and necessity being the mother of invention, we wound up as the orphans of effort and ingenuity. And pleased to be so. Sixty-six years of us would be enough to take the starch out of any nation.

 

The baby boom was skeptical about America’s inventive triumphalism. We took a lot of it for granted: light bulb, telephone, television, telegraph, phonograph, photographic film, skyscraper, airplane, air conditioning, movies. Many of our country’s creations seemed boring and square: cotton gin, combine harvester, cash register, electric stove, dishwasher, can opener, clothes hanger, paper bag, toilet paper roll, ear muffs, mass-produced automobiles. Some we regarded as sinister: revolver, repeating rifle, machine gun, atomic bomb, electric chair, assembly line. And, ouch, those Salk vaccine polio shots hurt.

 

The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik caused a blip in chauvinistic tech enthusiasm among those of us who were in grade school at the time. But then we learned that the math and science excellence being urged upon us meant more long division and multiplying fractions.

 

The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs were cool, but not as cool as the sex, drugs, and rock and roll we’d discovered in the meantime. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon in 1969, many of us had already been out in space for years, visiting all sorts of galaxies—in our own heads. And in our own heads was where my generation spent most of its time.

 

But if America is still rich and strong, why should it matter that we’re no longer interested in doing anything spectacular? Maybe critics of an America whose grasp exceeds its reach are victims of atavistic machismo. Maybe we have Freudian issues. Professional help might be in order. No Americans are scheduled to go to Mars, but plenty are scheduled to go to therapy. Perhaps the realities of 2012 demand a change in attitude.

 

Except the change has already happened, the result of our shift from an exterior to an interior existence. America once valued the high-skilled. Now we value the high-minded. We used to admire bold ideas. Now we admire benign idealism. This doesn’t make us good, it makes us wrong. The bold can be achieved. Of the ideal, there is none in this life.

 

We’ve given up what we think we can make for what we think can make us happy. We deplore all the effects of technology on the earth and the climate so that—while living our lives completely indoors, protected from dirt and weather—we can feel better about ourselves.

 

We’ve gone from hopeful thinking to wishful thinking. We have a belief that we can make things better with make-believe. The consequences of this worldview have been with us at least since the Vietnam War. Imagine the reaction of the American public on December 7, 1941, if President Roosevelt had proposed to win the hearts and minds of the Japanese.

 

The change in our thought means a change in our future. The high, wide surge of postwar American prosperity is past. We’ve learned that a rising tide lifts all boats, but not if their anchor chains are too short. Hard times can come again. They have already. So never mind what we did with our own college educations, we don’t want our college kids majoring in Heuristics of Modern Dance or Neo-Marxist Anime. We want them to study science, engineering, and math.

 

But where are the inter-planetary missions for them to plot with their astrophysics? Where are the floating cities, flying cars, and personal jet packs for them to build with their engineering? Where is the Manhattan Project to provide the fun of turning a quadratic equation into a mushroom cloud?

They’re in Asia. So maybe our kids should be studying science, engineering, math, and Chinese.

 

America’s retreat from visible, tangible manifestations of superiority doesn’t hurt just our pride, our economy, and our place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s also a bad advertising campaign. America has one great product to sell, individual liberty. It’s attractive, useful, healthy, and the fate of the world depends upon it.

 

We are the most important and maybe the only country that fully embodies the sanctity, dignity, independence, and responsibility of each and every person. “American” is not a nationality, an ethnicity, or a culture; it’s a fact of human freedom. Our country was not created and is not governed by a ruling class or even by majority rule. America is individuals exercising their right to do what they think is best with due respect (to the extent human nature allows) for the right of all other Americans to do likewise. This is not an ideology or a system. This is a blessing.

 

The rest of the world would like to be so blessed. But the concept of individual liberty is harder to grasp than we Americans think. Those with little experience of liberty understand license and lawlessness better than they understand freedom. We want everyone on earth to have sanctity, dignity, independence, and responsibility. And we want everyone to want it for each other. We want this not because of our idealism but because of our selfish desire for a little more peace and plenty.

 

The world will never be good. People fight hard and cause a lot of trouble when commanded by their self-interest. But people fight viciously and cause ruin when commanded by the interests of others. Individual liberty is the best we can do. Try any other sociopolitical combination—collective liberty, individual oppression, communitarian despotism.

 

However, if we are going to promote the benefits of individual liberty, we have to show what free people can do. We need evidence to support the truths we hold to be self-evident. We have to advertise. Putting something double the size of the Burj Khalifa where the World Trade Towers once stood and building a Corvette that can top 300 mph would be a start.

 

 

[SEC=UGA]

P.J. O'Rourke, though a dirty Mick, is one of the better writers currently living.

[wiegie]

 

Imagine the reaction of the American public on December 7, 1941, if President Roosevelt had proposed to win the hearts and minds of the Japanese.

Imagine the reaction of the American public on September 11, 2001, if President Bush had proposed to win the hearts and minds of the Taliban.

[Azazello1313]

Imagine the reaction of the American public on September 11, 2001, if President Bush had proposed to win the hearts and minds of the Taliban.

 

 

yeah that actually stood out to me as kind of a dumb line. also, winning hearts and minds is exactly what effective counter-insurgency strategy does. in the right hands (say Gen Petraeus), that mindset is an effective tool rather than a sign of weakness.

 

in a vague sense, you can take his comment as a critique of a foreign policy (and a military policy) predicated on the idea of nation-building. you can make a pretty good argument that such a foreign policy is what the post-cold war world has called for. but I guess I can see his point about the effect that sort of outlook may have on the national psyche, creating a more naive detachment when it comes to engaging the rest of the world. "We’ve gone from hopeful thinking to wishful thinking. We have a belief that we can make things better with make-believe." Yeah I can kinda buy that in connection with the rest of what he's saying.

[Chavez]

P.J. O'Rourke, though a dirty Mick, is one of the better writers currently living.

 

 

It seems to me he's kinda lost his fastball a bit in the last decade. Most of the writers who get tabbed as "...like Hunter S Thompson" are REALLY more like PJ O'Rourke.

 

 

Edited August 22, 2012 by Chavez

[Chavez]

 

 

yeah that actually stood out to me as kind of a dumb line. also, winning hearts and minds is exactly what effective counter-insurgency strategy does. in the right hands (say Gen Petraeus), that mindset is an effective tool rather than a sign of weakness.

 

in a vague sense, you can take his comment as a critique of a foreign policy (and a military policy) predicated on the idea of nation-building. you can make a pretty good argument that such a foreign policy is what the post-cold war world has called for. but I guess I can see his point about the effect that sort of outlook may have on the national psyche, creating a more naive detachment when it comes to engaging the rest of the world. "We’ve gone from hopeful thinking to wishful thinking. We have a belief that we can make things better with make-believe." Yeah I can kinda buy that in connection with the rest of what he's saying.

 

 

Still, it's a bad example.

 

It also ignores that the US/Allied Powers DID go in and nation-build and win the hearts and minds of the Japanese and Germans (winning the hearts and minds of Germany admittedly was helped by option B for them being the USSR).