for people of importance. They were idolised and treated as leaders; their opinions
were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously – after all, if
an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important… so his
opinions on foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even
though he proves himself to be both ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his
mouth. (Most of his fans were just as ignorant and unlettered; the disease was
spreading.)
Consider these:
1) ‘Bread and Circuses’;
2) The abolition of the pauper’s oath in Franklin Roosevelt’s first term;
3)’Peer group’ promotion in public schools.
These three conditions heterodyne each other. The abolition of the pauper’s oath as
a condition for public charity ensured that habitual failures, incompetents of every
sort, people who can’t support themselves and people who won’t, each of these would
have the same voice in ruling the country, in assessing taxes and spending them, as
(for example) Thomas Edison or Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Carnegie or Andrew Jackson.
Peer group promotion ensured that the franchise would be exercised by ignorant
incompetents. And ‘Bread and Circuses’ is what invariably happens to a democracy
that goes that route: unlimited spending on `social’ programmes ends in national
bankruptcy, which historically is always followed by dictatorship.
It seemed to me that these three things were the key mistakes that destroyed the
best culture in all known histories up to that time. Oh, there were other things –
strikes by public servants, for example. My father was still alive when this became
a problem.
Father said grimly, ‘There is a ready solution for anyone on the public payroll who
feels that he is not paid enough: he can resign and work for a living. This applies
with equal force to Congressmen, Welfare “dients”, schoolteachers, generals, garbage
collectors, and judges.’
And of course the entire twentieth century from 1917 on was clouded by the
malevolent silliness of Marxism.
But the Marxists would not and could not have had much influence if the American
people had not started losing the hard common sense that had won them a continent.
By de sixties everyone talked about his ‘rights’ and no one spoke of his duties –
and patriotism was a subject for jokes.
I do not believe that either Marx or that cracker revivalist who became the First
Prophet could have damaged the country if the people had not become soft in the
head.
‘But every man is entitled to his own opinion!’
Perhaps. Certainly every man had his own opinion on everything, no matter how silly.
On two subjects the overwhelming majority of people regarded their own opinions as
Absolute Truth, and sincerely believed that anyone who disagreed with them was
immoral, outrageous, sinful, sacrilegious, offensive, intolerable, stupid,
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illogical, treasonable, actionable, against the public interest, ridiculous, and
obscene.
The two subjects were (of course) sex and religion.
On sex and religion each American citizen knew the One Right Answer, by direct
Revelation from God.
In view of the wide diversity of opinion, most of them must necessarily have been
mistaken. But on these two subjects they were not accessible to reason.
‘But you must respect another man’s religious beliefs!’ For Heaven’s sake, why?
Stupid is stupid – faith doesn’t make it smart.
I recall one candidates promise that I heard during the Presidential campaign of
1976, a campaign promise that seems to me to illustrate how far American rationality
had skidded.
‘We shall drive ever forward along this line until all our citizens have
above-average incomes!’
Nobody laughed.
When I moved to Albuquerque I simplified my life in several ways. I simplified my
holdings and split them among three conservative managements, in New York, in
Toronto, and in Zurich. I wrote a new will, listing a few sentimental bequests, but
leaving the major portion, over ninety-five per cent, to the Howard Foundation.
Why? The decision resulted from some long, long midnight thoughts. I had far more
money than one old woman could spend – Lawsy me, I could not even spend the income
from it. Leave it m my children? They were no longer children and not one of them