Our vigorous virtues will save us. That is the thrust of the new mantra. That our VV's were squelched by being on the government dole. That we really just need to be unleashed by the nanny state and we will start creating companies fending for ourselves and taking care of the sick and elderly. No need for Big Three entitlements anymore. David Brooks piece in the New York Times explores this idea and he does say there has to be more than this. I would argue that the vigorous virtues were born out of necessity when there was a wide open country to be built up. People had to have VV's or they died. And a lot of them did.
But we industrialized and people were used like fodder. So on Labor Day we stand at nine percent unemployment with our vigorous virtues standing idle because we are all on the government tit. Knock everyone off and we will kick it in. This discounts personal responsibility in Titanic fashion. So nobody has any personal drive unless we are driven to hunger? Strip it down. It is Starve the Beast for the People. The Starve the Beast strategy was the driving force behind the debt ceiling kamikaze run. Just cut off the money flow and government will shrink.
Cut off the food and money and people will shrink. The weak will be weeded out and we will be left with the Vigorous Virtues cream of the crop. Can anyone say Social Darwinism? Survival of the fittest. This was the law of the land when bears and wolves ruled the North woods and people died like flies from starvation. But FDR decided enough was enough and we were better than that. Starve the people was replaced by a SAFETY NET. Vigorous Virtues took a back seat to compassion.
But that is all over now. So our new brethren say. It is time to Man Up and either start a company or die off and decrease the surplus population as Ebenezer Scrooge put it. So stock up and get ready. The Vigorous Virtues of those in power and who want power are coming to get us all off our duffs and back into action. Hell, they may even do away with Labor Day. No Vigorous Virtues man or woman needs a day off to celebrate...what? Labor? Slackers.
