Depression’s got ahold of me…
Uncle Sam Is Not Your Mama
Too bad he hates you all.
This one goes out to all those who think that it’s the government’s job to provide them with healthcare, free money when they can’t pay their bills, college education, food, a roof over their heads, personal happiness, etc…
“You must obey this now for a Law, that he that will not worke shall not eate (except by sickness he be disabled:) for the labors of thirtie or fortie honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintaine an hundred and fiftie idle loyterers”
Captain John Smith of Jamestown Colony uttered that famous phrase back in the early 1600’s, and for hundreds of years, this was the prevalent attitude in America- the term American Spirit came to embody a can-do attitude combining initiative, ingenuity, integrity and ambition. Men made their fortunes from the sweat of their brow and the power of their minds, and, combined with a tradition of inventiveness sparked by founding fathers Benjamin Franklin1 and Thomas Jefferson, this spirit caused America to flourish in the face of constant adversity. America, as a young nation, was beset on all sides with forces that would do anything to see it fail2, and yet it refused to die even through one of the bloodiest Civil Wars the planet had ever seen. Even up to the 1960’s, this was the case, as evidenced in President John F. Kennedy’s famous quote:”Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”.
Where is the American Spirit now?
I wish I knew.
What I do know, is how it started to dwindle
In 1929, a combination of rampant debt, a sudden crash in the stock market, a decline in exports, and a shortage of money caused what was known as the Great Depression. Keep in mind that the Great Depression was a worldwide occurrence, not isolated to the U.S.; People worldwide were out of work and starving as a direct result of mistrust on the international trade market, which caused prices to rise uncontrollably while wages and jobs dwindled. The unemployment rate had soared to over 25% by 1932, a rate that has never been exceeded since, nor has been even halfway matched since 1940. To combat the depression Roosevelt instituted what was known as “The New Deal”, which was, in short, an attempt to give everyone everything they wanted 3.
Though the New Deal can be credited with such notable improvements as the repeal of Prohibition, and the stabilization of the banking system, it was criticized soundly by both the right and left wing of American politics and eventually resulted in a national debt that has never been paid off to this day, and in fact never stopped growing in size. 4
More on this Wednesday, I get the feeling this one’s gonna have to be a series…
- Footnotes
- Pun definitely intended ↩
- If you don’t believe me, check out Wikepedia’s American Military History, there hasn’t been five straight years that we’ve gone since before our Nation’s inception that there hasn’t been some kind of military conflict. ↩
- wikipedia.com, New Deal Wiki ↩
- I tell a lie, as it turns out. After some judicious double-checking, I found that the national debt did indeed slightly drop in 1947, 1951, 1956 and 1957. Four years out of eighty. ↩
