by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n The Great Warpath<\/strong><\/p>\n This summer it has been a softer, modern version of living in a cabin on the Great Warpath circa 1740 near Albany or Montreal (in this regard, take a look at Eliot Cohen\u2019s new book\u00a0Conquered into Liberty<\/em>\u00a0on the origins of the American way of war), readying oneself for the next break-in \u2014 so our inland \u201cCalifornia Corridor\u201d has become from Bakersfield to Sacramento.<\/p>\n More specifically, I have been on the lookout around my farm for a predatory, nearly new, grey\/silver Toyota truck that drives in and then speeds out \u2014 always a day or so before the nocturnal theft. He\u2019s clever, this caser \u2014 and audacious too, like a wily Sherman tank prowling through the hedgerows. (Why, if poor, is he not home growing a tomato garden or scouring the roadside for the ubiquitous tossed aluminum cans and plastic bottles?<\/em>)<\/p>\n On three separate occasions from June to August, I have had copper wire stripped out of pumps, the barn ransacked, and the two locks pried off the shop and various things stolen. (Why did they steal buckets of 1900 antique bolts and square nails and leave alone a drill press and grinder? Ease of recycling? Ignorance?<\/em>)<\/p>\n When Metal Grows Legs<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the stranger things in the California Corridor is to periodically walk around a barnyard and notice: \u201cHmm, that set of rusted furrowers is gone? Hmmm, what happened to those sections of 2-inch pipe? Hmmm, didn\u2019t I have an old compressor next to the shed? Have I got dementia, or wasn\u2019t there once upon a time three metal ladders leaning against the shop?\u201d It is as if they became animate, grew legs, and quietly walked off in the sunset.<\/p>\n Hippo Regius<\/strong><\/p>\n Twice I ran into the barnyard to see the truck, with its two gangbanger youths, peel off in clouds of dust. (And, yes, as a CSU ex-professor, I know the party line: the dominant culture neglects\/exploits\/oppresses\/fill in the blanks the \u201cother\u201d to such a degree that he sometimes must lash out, or, on occasion, to find validation, might just do something illegal like steal buckets of antique nails, or illogical, like in poverty buying a new truck, and thus so disturbs\/finally wins the attention of those with privilege and their self-constructed norms. Been there and heard that for thirty years<\/em>).<\/p>\n The Toyota is always around when theft occurs, and always speeding off when anyone spots it. Rural California is also like North Africa circa 420 AD: the few family farms left are mostly fenced or walled, the dogs large, the owners armed \u2014 trying to survive against organized Vandal attacks. All we need are mosaics in the courtyard portraying happier times as a testament to future archeologists. Maybe a \u201cCave Canem<\/em>!\u201d on the doorstep.<\/p>\n I know of no neighboring farm that has not been broken into or fought\/scared off such intruders. (The urban counterpart in our town are a few municipal workers stealing their own city manhole covers; two ex-policemen, like rogue legionaries, now up on felony charges; or Gothic-like gangs, prying off all the bronze dedicatory plaques from the hallowed buildings. Perhaps they are similar to the bullet-hungry occupying Ottomans in 16th-century Greece, destroying classical temples and shrines to find and melt down the lead seals over metal block clamps \u2014 on the theory that someone 2,000 years earlier knew a lot more about making lead than did they, or maybe impoverished Greeks around 1850 finishing up the destruction of antiquity by fracting and melting down the scattered marble blocks for lime whitewash.<\/em>)<\/p>\n Then and Now<\/strong><\/p>\n So it is that in 1935 poor people scraped and saved to cast a bronze plaque for their Depression-era new city hall, and in 2011 rather more affluent people ripped it off to melt it down for a layaway payment on some chrome rims or another round of meth.<\/p>\n Civilization ends when the pampered beneficiaries of the hard work of the now dead have the luxury of ignoring how hard it was \u2014 and is \u2014 to build shelter from the elements, to erect public buildings from scrub, to grow food and sprout farms from sage. Our contemporary criminals are protected from the elemental struggle and so have the indulgence to gnaw away at civilization\u2019s veneer \u2014 and we, in our conspiratorial silence about them, likewise forgot that to keep still about the destruction of the work of others is to be complicit in it.<\/p>\n Jaws on Wheels<\/strong><\/p>\n Seven days ago, I left to teach here at Hillsdale for my month vacation. My son, back home on the farm \u2014 he often rushes out armed when trucks come into the driveway at night \u2014 called. He mentioned in passing that the Toyota was back, Jaws-like circling around the farm in short bursts of speed to see if anyone was there. (The\u00a0<\/em>modus operandi\u00a0in the rural California hinterlands is to drive into a farm, check if anyone comes out, if so, either peel out or even stay put to \u201cinquire\u201d about a \u201crental\u201d or \u201cwork.\u201d If no one comes out, then break a window, grab a TV or computer and speed off. Also: Please do not suggest, \u201ccall the sheriff\u201d; I have and even \u201cfilled out a report\u201d over the phone, no less. Enough said. And yes, I probably should sell the 140-year-old farm and move away, but also probably won\u2019t. Why leave and give in to barbarism? There are still far more good than lawless people in the valley.<\/em>)<\/p>\n Stealing Up For a Truck?<\/strong><\/p>\n My point in this long excursus? Note the description \u201clate-model Toyota.\u201d I think it is a Tacoma, maybe 2009-11, so not a cheap truck by any means.<\/p>\n Earlier another youth drove in without seeing me mowing the lawn. I ran up; startled he stammered, \u201cHey, mister, I\u2019m only looking for scrap metal to buy.\u201d (What is it with the national epidemic with good wire or scrap metal?<\/em>)<\/p>\n I\u2019ll pass on his shoulder to finger sleeve tattoos, the ink drops under the eyes, the shaved head, wife-beater T-shirt, the inked-in but impressive religious icon tattooed on the neck, and the whole nine yards. As I wrote earlier, I immediately noticed brand new hot-water tanks, still in their labeled cardboard containers, in the bed of his truck. They seemed very \u201cmetal\u201d to me, but not very \u201cscrap.\u201d Words were exchanged and he backed out.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the point: he too drove a brand new truck, this one a custom-painted fire-engine red Dodge, hopped up, with an expensive stereo blaring.<\/p>\n Chrome-rimmed Poverty?<\/strong><\/p>\n Where are we going with this?<\/p>\n Yes, I confess once more to the same destination as the flash mobs and the London riots. What we think in the West now as too little is far too much. Both these thieves could trade in their multi-thousand-dollar trucks for cash to buy food, rather than steal the property of others and cause mayhem to make their payments. Heck, the rims alone are worth $1000.<\/p>\n (Thieves and gangbangers create a climate of general fear; they ruin the sense of tranquility, and they betray 150 years of collective labor of the now dead to create civilization from near nothing. Shame on them. Americans should not need to have armored rural mail boxes.<\/em>) To suggest that they could do without the trucks or go without the dole, is not \u2014 channeling the president\u2019s most recent speech warning against anti-government zealots \u2014 the same as wanting children to suffer from mercury poisoning or to render us helpless against the healthcare industry or to destroy government and want to start over from scratch.<\/p>\n More Federal Cash to the Rescue<\/strong><\/p>\n So it is too with the federal government. In 2008 the housing market collapsed due to Wall Street speculation in sub-prime paper, dishonest banks, and real estate agents pushing mortgages and houses, and to be fair, either stupid or greedy unqualified house buyers who, late to a doomed game of musical chairs, thought even they, as the music ended, could find cheap loans, buy a home, earn thousands in instant \u201cequity,\u201d borrow against it, and get \u201cfree\u201d cash.<\/p>\n But the glue that held the entire amorphous mess together were federally-guaranteed loans backed by Freddie and Fannie, agencies that were guided by congressional politics and not market worries \u2014 and themselves skimmed by incompetent bureaucrats who ended up millionaires. Take away those multibillion-dollar guarantors, and the market would have precluded the unqualified, the Wall Street roguery would have been neutered, and the inevitable housing bust would have been serious rather than catastrophic.<\/p>\n They Borrowed All For Us<\/strong><\/p>\n Then there was George Bush\u2019s 2008 multitrillion-dollar \u201cstimulus\u201d that \u201csaved\u201d the country, but destroyed the real progress he had made from 2006 to 2008 in addressing mounting debt. Then there was Barack Obama\u2019s \u201csecond\u201d $800 million \u201cshovel-ready\u201d stimulus. Now, of course, discredited Keynesianspost facto<\/em>\u00a0decry its timid minuteness \u2014 but go back to January 2009 and read the op-eds. Then there was ebullition that Obama had taken the big dare and gone \u201cbig.\u201d Only spending of that magnitude, we were lectured, would save us \u2014 as in funding \u201cmillions of green jobs\u201d and \u201cinvestments\u201d and \u201cinfrastructure.\u201d It was a weird time of Van Jones\u2019 fakery, and preachy assurances\/warnings from Geithner, Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, and Summers. Pelosi\u00a0et al<\/em>. were even bragging that there was no need to read the vast borrowing bills before they were passed.<\/p>\n Money, Money Everywhere \u2014 and Not a Drop of Prosperity<\/strong><\/p>\n We know that, like the first stimulus, the second went into the hands of those who were pretty well off; if banks and Wall Street profited the first time from conservative largesse, the second left-wing version enriched pseudo-green soon-to-be-bankrupt companies, pension funds, municipal and state employees, unions, and environmental bureaucracies.<\/p>\n Now we are supposed to be saved by Stimulus III. At nearly $500 billion in a single year, it may prove the largest single year payout in history. And we are assured it will not go to Wall Street, big banks, green companies, broke city and state governments, and \u201cshovel ready\u201d projects, but instead be \u201cinvested\u201d in \u201cwork\u201d programs fixing \u201cinfrastructure.\u201d (Note the president no longer can use words and phrases like \u201cshovel ready,\u201d \u201cgreen jobs,\u201d or \u201cstimulus\u201d; they have all gone the way of sermons on \u201ccivility.\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n But does anyone dare imagine that what got us into this mess in 2008 and kept us stuck through 2011 are these huge federal programs that distort market forces while piling up trillions of dollars in debt, destroying rather than enhancing personal initiative? Both employers and workers are losing incentives, the former better off are ossified in fear of losing something, the latter worse off calcified in assurances of getting something.<\/p>\n Subsidizing Stasis<\/strong><\/p>\n Maybe it is a fine and noble thing that the Obama administration vastly extended unemployment insurance. And, bravo, that nearly 50 million are now on food stamps. But a tragic voice from the past warns us that the more we diminish human incentives and guarantee a sort of cushioned permanent poverty, two things result: one, fewer people scramble to find productive work; and, two, envy sharpens as they begin to turn on their benefactors as being cheap, or mean-spirited in never giving quite enough to ensure parity with \u201cthem.\u201d A cherry-red new truck or silver Toyota is never quite what others might have.<\/p>\n Epitaph<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem with those who invaded my farm this summer was not poverty, but too much \u2014 at least in the sense of driving late-model trucks as they sought to destroy the lives and tranquility of others to get things that, by the very fact of their mode of transportation, they did not need. For the last two years, I have witnessed two constants: late-model cars in the valley shopping centers, an epidemic of obesity apparent to the naked eye, majorities on plastic food stamp debt cards, without apparent work in mid-morning, and a general unhappiness in the check-out lines that the government, state, city, etc. is not doing enough for them. All that is coupled with a media message of a cruel, heartless society that needs to do more for its oppressed \u2014 and a popular culture that damns any so witless and heartless for pointing the contradictions out.<\/p>\n Welfare on Top and Bottom<\/strong><\/p>\n The welfare state, aside from being broke, is eroding initiative and warping reality \u2014 both for the elite at the top, like the executives who just milked a half-trillion dollars in sweetheart loans from some idiotic \u201cgreen\u201d bureaucrat, to the late-model truck drivers robbing productive farms to pay for their stereos and hydraulic-lifters.<\/p>\n So when the president speaks of \u201cmillions of green jobs\u201d and \u201cbringing jobs home,\u201d I worry.<\/p>\n You see, I wish it were true, but I have doubts. I can imagine an employer offering to open a new state-of-the-art plant, but I fear only for millions in guaranteed federal loans, to be justified on some faddish green or \u201cput people first\u201d con.<\/p>\n Then I see someone like \u201csons of bitches\u201d Jimmy Hoffa, or the Seattle longshoremen, or an NLRB plant-shutting academic nincompoop entering the picture to \u201chave labor do its part.\u201d And I don\u2019t know what we are going to do to get those working, like the late-model truck-driving thieves \u2014 would such idle promise to be innovative, show up on time, be honest and disciplined, be familiar with written blueprints and warnings about their lathes and grinders, and be more productive than their competitors overseas?<\/p>\n And so I ask myself: \u201cIs all this more efficient, more productive than what the Chinese offer?\u201d \u201cWill our solar panel or drill press be better built and at a cheaper cost and more durable?\u201d \u201cHave we justified our standard of living that allows us to slack while others toil?\u201d \u201cIs there a limit to the borrowed subsidies?\u201d \u201cHow many engineers, brain surgeons, and savvy mechanics is California \u2014 near last in its high school test scores \u2014 producing that are better than those found elsewhere?\u201d<\/p>\n Reality Cannot Be Reinvented<\/strong><\/p>\n The tragic voice now shouts, not whispers: \u201cOf course, this is not sustainable, you idiot! You must put real hope of profit and greater fear of loss into the employer who is freed to sink or swim on his own, a sense of challenge in the heart of the scrambling workers, and end the subsidies that allow someone to steal as a pastime to custom paint his truck cherry red and lift his truck bed up and down with a button, while the government gives him cash for his food and shelter.\u201d<\/p>\n We are in a weird predicament where too much is not enough and the medicine is worse than the malady \u2014 and saying just that earns one ridicule.<\/p>\n It is not Barack Obama\u2019s fault; he is a mere totem, just the overdue dividend of our long ago collective investment.<\/p>\n Again, if he didn\u2019t exist, we would have to invent him.<\/p>\n Announcements<\/strong><\/p>\n On this topic of decline or slogging through: Rome collapsed in the West in the latter fifth century AD, although the series of Gothic invasions posed no more of a threat than what both the republic and empire had thwarted many times over the prior 700 years of Roman history. In contrast, in the East, Constantinople fought off invasions from the north, east, and south and persevered for another millennium. That contrast raises the question about the nature of external threats and internal inability to meet them \u2014 when and why do unlikely civilizations survive and likely ones no survive? I\u2019ll talk about that on Monday, October 3, in Boston at 6 p.m. at a convention sponsored by theRetirement Income Industry Association<\/a>\u00a0[1]. On another note, be sure to look into a\u00a0counter-commemoration conference<\/a>\u00a0[2] protesting the \u201canti-racism\u201d so-called \u201cDurban III\u201d symposium, to be held across the street from the UN in New York on September 22. If one collates the new axis of Iran, Hezbollah, Turkey, Hamas, and perhaps revolutionary Egypt, then Israel is back to 1967, but this time with enemies energized not by sclerotic Sovietism, but radical Islamism. What is eerie is that Israel remains a constitutional state, while its neighbors turn to theocracy \u2014 while the West, and increasingly the US, blames it for these metamorphoses.<\/p>\n URLs in this post: \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Great Warpath This summer it has been a softer, modern version of living in a cabin on the Great Warpath circa 1740 near Albany or Montreal (in this regard, take a look at Eliot Cohen\u2019s new book\u00a0Conquered into Liberty\u00a0on the origins of the American way of war), readying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[16],"tags":[598,12,1014,642,258,74,560,67,592],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-wP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":511,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/there-is-no-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":2035,"position":0},"title":"There Is No California","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line. Consider the disconnects: California's combined income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, but the state's deficit is still about $16 billion. It's estimated that more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10849,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/christmas-lessons-from-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":2035,"position":1},"title":"Christmas Lessons from California","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California. \u00a0 Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people. \u00a0 In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Water"","block_context":{"text":"Water","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/water\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9376,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/will-california-ever-thrive-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":2035,"position":2},"title":"Will California Ever Thrive Again?","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The state is sinking, and its wealthy class is full of hypocrites. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online There was more of the same-old, same-old California news recently. Some 62 percent of state roads have been rated poor or mediocre. There were more predications of huge cost overruns\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12241,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-is-a-cruel-medieval-state\/","url_meta":{"origin":2035,"position":3},"title":"California Is a Cruel Medieval State","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance\u2014gender or race\u2014has returned\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-myth-of-a-california-renaissance\/","url_meta":{"origin":2035,"position":4},"title":"The Myth of a California Renaissance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Sacramento's strategy for recovery is more taxes, more regulation, and more government. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Are the recent raves about a new California renaissance true? Rolling Stone\u00a0magazine just gushed that California governor Jerry Brown has brought the state back from the brink of \u201cdouble-digit unemployment, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/SF_From_Marin_Highlands3-300x211.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6987,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tale-of-two-droughts\/","url_meta":{"origin":2035,"position":5},"title":"A Tale Of Two Droughts","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Content Agency\u00a0 Despite recent sporadic rain,\u00a0California\u00a0is still in the worst extended drought in its brief recorded history. 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\n
\n[1] Retirement Income Industry Association:\u00a0http:\/\/riia-usa.org\/conferences\/default.asp<\/a>
\n[2] counter-commemoration conference:\u00a0http:\/\/www.durbanwatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n