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Civilization in Reverse
· Thursday, January 19, 2012
In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem to discount.
News accounts abound now of impoverished Athens residents scrounging pharmacies for scarce aspirin -- as Greece is squeezed to make interest payments to the supposedly euro-pinching German banks.
Such accounts may be exaggerations, but they should warn us that yearly progress is never assured. Instead, history offers plenty of examples of life becoming far worse than it had been centuries earlier. The biographer Plutarch, writing 500 years after the glories of classical Greece, lamented that in his time weeds grew amid the empty colonnades of the once-impressive Greek city-states. In America, most would prefer to live in the Detroit of 1941 than the Detroit of 2011. The quality of today's air travel has regressed to the climate of yesterday's bus service.
In 2000, Greeks apparently assumed that they had struck it rich with their newfound money-laden European Union lenders -- even though they certainly had not earned their new riches through increased productivity, the discovery of more natural resources, or greater collective investment and savings.
The brief Euro mirage has vanished. Life in Athens is zooming backward to the pre-EU days of the 1970s. Then, most imported goods were too expensive to buy, medical care was often premodern, and the city resembled more a Turkish Istanbul than a European Munich.
The United States should pay heed to the modern Greek Cassandra, since our own rendezvous with reality is rapidly approaching. The costs of servicing a growing national debt of more than $15 trillion are starting to squeeze out other budget expenditures. Americans are no longer affluent enough to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to import oil, while we snub our noses at vast new oil and gas finds beneath our own soil and seas.
In my state, Californians for 40 years have hiked taxes; grown their government; vastly expanded entitlements; put farmland, timberland and oil and gas lands off limits; and opened their borders to millions of illegal aliens. They apparently assumed that they had inherited so much wealth from prior generations and that their state was so naturally rich, that a continually better life was their natural birthright.
It wasn't. Now, as in Greece, the veneer of civilization is proving pretty thin in California. Hospitals no longer have the money to offer sophisticated long-term medical care to the indigent. Cities no longer have the funds to self-insure themselves from the accustomed barrage of monthly lawsuits. When thieves rip copper wire out of street lights, the streets stay dark. Most state residents would rather go to the dentist these days than queue up and take a number at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hospital emergency rooms neither have room nor act as if there's much of an emergency.
Traffic flows no better on most of the state's freeways than it did 40 years ago -- and often much worse, given the crumbling infrastructure and increased traffic. Once-excellent K-12 public schools now score near the bottom in nationwide tests. The California state university system keeps adding administrators to the point where they have almost matched the number of faculty, although half of the students who enter CSU need remedial reading and math. Despite millions of dollars in tutoring, half the students still don't graduate. The taxpayer is blamed in constant harangues for not ponying up more money, rather than administrators being faulted for a lack of reform.
In 1960 there were far fewer government officials, far fewer prisons, far fewer laws and far fewer lawyers -- and yet the state was a far safer place than it is a half-century later. Technological progress -- whether iPhones or Xboxes -- can often accompany moral regress. There are not yet weeds in our cities, but those too may be coming.
The average Californian, like the average Greek, forgot that civilization is fragile. Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility -- and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.
A keen visitor to Athens -- or Los Angeles -- during the last decade not only could have seen that things were not quite right, but also could have concluded that they could not go on as they were. And so they are not.
Washington, please take heed.
(C) 2012 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
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ct-tom
Great column!
A politician (can't remember who it was) recently said that we are always but 48 hours from Thunderdome. Think "worst-case scenarios," EMP's, etc.
We worry now about the value of our 401K's but could soon be trying desperately not to be killed for a glass of clean water. Thin veneer, indeed; much to consider.
Posted January 19, 2012 at 10:44:39 AM
PDK
Thank you Victor.
Back in 1973 I read an article dealing with the wealth of California. It was braggadocious but it was true.
The article talked about how wealthy California was at that moment in time. California was so wealthy, had it seceeded from the union, it would have been the 7th richest nation in the world. I was so impressed by the articles content I have never forgotten its message.
At that time, Ronald Wilson Reagan was in his second and last term as Gov., and in 1975 Californians elected a new comer to the stage, son of a former Gov., the democrat, the liberal, the unbelievable Jerry Brown.
California now began its sojourn into the dark, what once was forbidden abyss of liberal/democrat philosophy, of liberal/democrat weltangschuung.
This is the place where liberal democrat leaders transform political leadership into surrogate parenting. This is where their particular brand of parenting abdicates the tough love policies of good parents and instead embraces the feel good policies of the rich best buddy policies of bad parents.
Califonrnia, in less than 40 years, is now home to 10s of millions of immature adults, some legal, some illegal, all addicted, with all the addiction of a street addict, to their rich, best buddy, liberal/democrat daddys leadership.
Just a few years ago, California, now part of Aztlan, now morally bankrupt, now nearly financially bankrupt, chose, unbelievably as it may seem, to elect once again the man who began this oddessy, the man who brought liberal/democrat leadership and its weltangschuung to bare upon what once could have been the 7th richest nation in the world, decided to elect once again the one and only, Jerry Brown.
An addict can only make one choice, a spoiled child can only make one choice, more goodies. With so many of Californias enfranchized citizens now addicts, the choice of Jerry was a no brainer, the addicted immature Californians need their fix.
Jerrys California is a microcosum of America. BHO is doing to America what Jerry is doing to California. Both America and California now stand wobbly legged up on the precipice overhanging the abyss. Our complete collapse is now highly probable.
Although I believe it is time to dissolve the Union, separating out into two different countries based on our mutually exclusive, cultural philosophies, not many others do. So I suggest, we the matured and the sane get it together and bring the more responsible republicans to power. Time grows short.
Nobama 2012, vote republican. Thank you.
Posted January 19, 2012 at 12:03:30 PM
Holmes Simons
"The quality of today's air travel has regressed to the climate of yesterday's bus service."
Mr. Hanson, you may be correct in your assessment, but one still cannot become a "Mile High Club" member riding a Greyhound. Well, maybe a new-age Obama soldier could.
Bestiality, Bestiality.
Learn it from Obama
at his Man's Country Academy.
Apply it to the Army,
Air Force, Navy, and Marines,
And pay witness to our warriors'
Frightening New Reality.
The Coast Guard already has dolphins. But I regress.
Posted January 19, 2012 at 12:19:17 PM
Jeremy
About California, the author writes, "There are not yet weeds in our cities, but those too may be coming."
As a Californian. I'd put it slightly differently: "There may not be weeds in our cities, but there sure is plenty of weed."
Posted January 19, 2012 at 12:21:52 PM
Richard Ryan
My wife and I have been spending the winter with our oldest daughter and her family in southern California. My eyes have certainly been opened. If there happens to be a 12 hour period without murder,rape,holdups,hit-and-run accidents,high speed chases,and on and om, that is the big nightly news. In addition to that, since Moonbeam Brown did not manage to completely destroy the state of California the first time around, the voters have given him a 2nd chance to finish the job, I will be happy to be back home in southwest Missouri.
Richard Ryan
Lamar,Missouri - Birthplace of Harry S Truman
Posted January 19, 2012 at 12:45:24 PM
readinglady
In late 1956 the no-longer-running "bus Co." called TWA sent me to So CA. I remember what a great place it was and growing all the time. I also remember when air travel was an occasion and people dressed for the occasion. Now air travelers look like they are going on or returning from a camping trip.
I voted for Gov. Reagan twice. And then we got Gov. Moonbeam...I think it is closer to sun stroke. Buying votes with out money is what the Dumbs, ooops I mean Dems do. It the first page of their play book and if I weren't so old I would move out of this "paradise".
Posted January 19, 2012 at 2:25:11 PM
readinglady
Oooh, sorry, I meant to say with OUR money, not without money.
Posted January 19, 2012 at 2:26:41 PM
COS911
Forget a fence on our southern border, we need one on the western border, just on the easter/northern edge of California. We need to keep the California socialism disease from spreading. We might even consider including Nevada, Oregon, and Washington--or at least parts of them--as it may be too late there. Prevent the Californication of the rest of the country!
Posted January 19, 2012 at 7:06:08 PM