From PJTV.com, a bone-chilling exposition of how the entitlement mentality killed one of the great American cities:
There but for the grace of god? Not quite. Detroit is just the leading edge of a wave of entitlement thinking that is engulfing what was once the beacon of human liberty for the whole world.
We scorn philosophy at our peril. For more than a century and a half, Americans have been asking profoundly important philosophical questions — and giving the wrong answers.
“What do the rights of the individual matter when people are starving?”
“How can you worry about private property rights when people are homeless?”
“Health care is a collective responsibility. Why should you be free to escape it even if you can pay your own way?”
“How dare you claim a right to personal autonomy when your personal autonomy is destroying the planet!?!”
Don’t bother to ask yourself what America will look like when the concept of individual rights has finally been eradicated from our philosophy. We already know the answer to that question. It will look like Detroit.
Arn Cenedella says:
Greg
I often do not agree with what you write but on this topic you are right on.
America is the land of OPPORTUNITY not the land of GUARRANTY.
My grandfather on my father’s side came to America thru Boston in the early 1900s from Italy. My grandfather did not come because the government would take care of him. He came because there was OPPORTUNITY for a better freer life for his family in America.
I would say most immigrants came to America for the same reason. Many died trying to get here but that did not stop Millions from coming.
Yes, we as a society should help the most disadvantaged amongst us but this support should not become a perpetual entitlement that destroys incentive to work and achieve.
Ayn Rand in Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged lays out the dangers of a “collective” government-regulated society that snuffs out the drive for individual achievement.
I believe most Americans understand this.
December 22, 2009 — 10:17 am
Teri Lussier says:
Y’all have no clue.
Do you remember the TV camera crews in the 60’s going into remote Appalachia to show the rest of the country how the po’ folks lived?
“Lookee here! A mountain shack! And there’s an outhouse! Chickens in the front yard! Barefoot chil’ren! How sad.”
Point, shoot, point, shoot, get the shot, make your point, get the hell out of town. Don’t forget to shower on the way out, lest you get some of that world on you.
The exploitation of the Rustbelt disgusts me, and I don’t care who is doing the exploiting or what your point is. There are real people here who are living real lives full of love and joy and happiness and unless you are going to put your shoulder next to mine to make this piece of the world a little better, then I’ll ask you to stop using our world for your own gain.
Yes, that’s a nerve, it’s located right next to my heart.
December 22, 2009 — 11:57 am
Greg Swann says:
> then I’ll ask you to stop using our world for your own gain.
When the neighbor’s kid ruins her life with crystal meth and jackass boyfriends, that’s a sad thing, and my heart goes out to the parents, the siblings and all the other victims of such a mess. But that does not make the story something other than a cautionary tale from which everyone else can profit by learning to do better.
The fully-enfranchised citizens of the states of the northeast and midwest voted themselves bread and circuses for a hundred years. Now the bill has come due — and everywhere you look you see Starnesville. Very sad for the people involved, but everyone who has read the Fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant knew how this story had to end.
What’s the most merciful thing we can do for the victims of self-inflicted Socialism in the Rust Best? Help them learn to do better going forward. Anything else seems to me to be boo-boo kissing — a palliative for the guilt of the kisser and a nutrition-free marshmallow’s worth of treacly, affected affection for the people having their enormous asses kissed.
In other words, the very worst thing we can do for the victims of Socialism is to tell them their troubles are not their fault. They are, and nothing will get better until they stop trying to plunder their neighbors at gunpoint. Decent guys won’t date a tweeker and decent people won’t remain for long in a Kleptocracy — if they have any place left to escape to.
Nature is just, and it will not be cheated, no matter what. I’m sorry for the people enmired in the states where Socialists have ruined everything — and much of my family is stuck in a hellhole just like Detroit. But, Sister, they asked for it, and they have no rational reason to complain that they’re starving like grasshoppers after they spent a hundred years chasing off the ants.
They wanted to live in a world of “people, not profits.” That world is Detroit. That world is Starnesville. If they don’t like it, they need to change their ideas, their philosophy. Nothing will get better for them until they do — although it may get quite a bit worse for the rest of us.
My take: Don’t kiss a union man’s ass for being a lifelong schnorrer, and don’t lend any money to the angry-eyed tweeker next door. I’m more than happy to help anyone pursue Splendor, but I won’t ever excuse or subsidize vice.
December 22, 2009 — 2:08 pm
Damon Chetson says:
Why Detroit? Why are we not on the road that leads to Paris, London, Stockholm or Copenhagen? I’ve never been to Paris, but from what I’ve seen of the other cities, they’re really quite nice.
December 22, 2009 — 2:10 pm
Teri Lussier says:
This is a bed of our own making. This is our life. I’m not asking anyone to make excuses for it, or subsidize it. I don’t need mercy and I’m not a victim.
I don’t want pity, and I don’t want snarky comments from film makers who fly in and fly out as it suits their own purposes, using the Rustbelt
to promote their narrow political agendas on any side of the aisle.
All the people who left and smugly look back at wht they think is a cesspool, it’s not a cesspool, it’s lives. Real lives. We are not victims. We chose this. It’s been our decision, and we have to work our way out of it and if the only thing that you see when looking on from afar is desolation, victimization, destruction- a hellhole, then dearest Brother, you are viewing this through your own lens. You and everyone else are free to learn whatever you want from my life, and I’ll learn from yours, but noone is welcome to view me through their own tiny aperature and give me a name just to suit their own needs. I refuse that name. I won’t answer when you call me by that name.
December 22, 2009 — 4:02 pm
Greg Swann says:
> but noone is welcome to view me through their own tiny aperature and give me a name just to suit their own needs. I refuse that name. I won’t answer when you call me by that name.
In what way would you distinguish this from Identity Politics?
It’s perfectly cool, if that’s the position you want to take. But Ohio or Michigan or Illinois could do a lot to get back to the plus side of the ledger by cutting taxes, cutting spending and getting rid of their kleptomaniaical labor laws. If they won’t do those things, no amount of team spirit is going to make much difference.
December 22, 2009 — 4:50 pm
Damon Chetson says:
For more than a century and a half, Americans have been asking profoundly important philosophical questions — and giving the wrong answers.
Of course I know you Greg, and I know you don’t mean to be saying that the America of the 1850s – with its chattel slavery, its treatment of women as second class citizens, and its Indian wars – was giving the right answers to many deep philosophical questions.
I don’t know why Detroit has failed, and I certainly have no better understanding of it after having watched that video.
December 22, 2009 — 4:24 pm
Greg Swann says:
> with its chattel slavery, its treatment of women as second class citizens, and its Indian wars
This is the Well-Poisoning Fallacy. I made a point of detailing the specific questions by which Marxists have successfully undermined Individualism — and not just in the U.S. I am happy to give credit to the American people for finishing much of the work of 1776 before becoming enamored of the Marxist flavor of slavery.
> I don’t know why Detroit has failed
The productive class moved to the Southwest. I’ve been helping them, like the Scarlet Pimpernel. No guillotine for those left behind — not yet, anyway.
December 22, 2009 — 4:34 pm
Teri Lussier says:
I don’t know anything about Identity Politics.
>But Ohio or Michigan or Illinois could do a lot to get back to the plus side of the ledger by cutting taxes, cutting spending and getting rid of their kleptomaniaical labor laws.
You are right.
December 22, 2009 — 5:05 pm
Greg Swann says:
>> But Ohio or Michigan or Illinois could do a lot to get back to the plus side of the ledger by cutting taxes, cutting spending and getting rid of their kleptomaniaical labor laws.
> You are right.
Thanks. What likelihood would you assign to that kind of outcome?
I’ve understood the state politics of Illinois since I was a kid. I would rate Illinois as being 0% likely to become a right-to-work state in the next ten years. To the extent that I can help people in Illinois realize a better life, it will be by helping them to move to Arizona — even though Arizona is by now too much like California and not enough like Texas in its own state politics.
But there is nothing that I can do to make life better for people in Illinois if they don’t move away. To the contrary, as with Detroit, the lives of the people who stay behind will almost certainly get progressively worse.
This is the irrepressible power of philosophy. Until the people who remain in Illinois learn better, they are unlikely to do better. I’m sorry for them, but not Mother-Teresa-sorry, as it were. You can lead a man to reason, but you can’t make him think.
December 22, 2009 — 5:23 pm
Jeff Brown says:
Like the farmer who plants corn in the spring, and isn’t shocked to be harvesting corn in autumn, those who plant collectivism will harvest the destruction of the human spirit.
If that doesn’t describe Detroit, nothing does.
December 22, 2009 — 5:28 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>What likelihood would you assign to that kind of outcome?
I don’t know.
No, that’s not true. I do know. That’s the nerve this hits- and you know that. BUT I don’t want nor need to hear this from anyone who isn’t actually living here. And if that’s what Identity Politics means, then guilty, although I don’t identify with entitlementality and I’d like to continue living here without having to live with that as a constant theme in the background of my life. You can roll your eyes at my.. what? Stoopidity? Optimism? Ignorance? But I don’t want to be forced out of my home in order to live freely. Ain’t I a Daytonian? I’ve understood the state politics of Illinois since I was a kid.
Me too, Greg, me too. Ugh. I’m in pain.
Merry Christmas, dear friend.
December 22, 2009 — 5:49 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>If that doesn’t describe Detroit, nothing does.
Glass houses, Jeff. California is planting its own seeds of collectivism and if you think you are immune from the problems Detroit faces, then think again.
I see this almost everywhere. It’s not exclusive to Detroit, it’s not a Rustbelt issue, except that the Rustbelt is the first region to fall because of this particular problem. This is a problem that is snaking throughout the country, and if you look at it as a regional problem you are likely to be blind to it in your own backyard.
December 22, 2009 — 6:46 pm
Greg Swann says:
> I see this almost everywhere. It’s not exclusive to Detroit, it’s not a Rustbelt issue, except that the Rustbelt is the first region to fall because of this particular problem. This is a problem that is snaking throughout the country, and if you look at it as a regional problem you are likely to be blind to it in your own backyard.
I agree with this completely. Absent a complete reversal in political philosophy in the United States — a resurgence of the idea of inalienable individual rights — every American city is but inches and hours away from Detroit’s fate.
> Ugh. I’m in pain.
My apologies.
> Merry Christmas, dear friend.
Likewise. To better days!
December 22, 2009 — 8:32 pm
Brian Brady says:
“Glass houses, Jeff. California is planting its own seeds of collectivism and if you think you are immune from the problems Detroit faces, then think again.”
Actually, those are life choking weeds that grew from seeds planted 30 years ago and it’s about to come to a head. California went through this in the 60s when the Legislature (and Papa Moonbeam) rode the coattails of Hollywood amd was shocked in the 90s when defense disappeared.
California has an uncanny ability to reinvent itself, though. It attracts the intellectual and creative capital needed to spawn industries like technology, biotech, genetic engineering and will probably lead the green reconstruction movement.
Call it the Hollywood influence but there’s always a happy ending in the Golden State. My optimism is cautious, though. We need to hack those weeds every twenty years or so so that the green shoots can take root.
December 22, 2009 — 7:53 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>Call it the Hollywood influence but there’s always a happy ending in the Golden State.
Brian, I think it’s safe to say that California has done more than any other state to push through health care reform, which will effect all of us, but not all of us equally as the sweetheart deals are showing. Selling the country down the river by the representatives of a few states is one of the more despicable acts of collectivism in recent memory.
Rustbelt pain, as Greg keeps pointing out, tends to be left to the Rustbelt, and that’s as it should be. Sandbelt pain, OTOH, tends to be legislated amongst the 50 states. I often feel your pain, Brian, because it’s often legislated that I share it with you. A happy ending is hardly what I’d call it.
December 23, 2009 — 2:02 am
Sean Purcell says:
Brian’s optimism aside, California is a much more cautionary tale than the Rust Belt. The latter was dominated by an industry completely out of touch with the free market and a political machine completely in touch with the progressive ideals that Greg has already so aptly flayed. But, much like California’s fall in the early 90’s, they will rebuild through diversification of their economy. It will take a while and it will hurt, but this is a catalyst for growth recognized by the majority (to whom I assign more of Teri’s personality and value traits than those found in the inner cities).
California, on the other hand, jumped on the neo-pro bandwagon four decades ago and never really got off. Over the past two decades we didn’t just plant seeds in this state, we poisoned the land. The current system is not repairable by any stretch of the imagination. Between redistricting, tax laws and the weight of so many entitlements the only real fix is a complete rewriting of the California Constitution! Can you imagine a state being so badly injured that it must destroy itself and start again? (Well yes, actually: that’s why California is the true cautionary tale for this nation…) The citizens of the great state of California did not commit the sin of inaction as I suggest for the mid-west; this was a full commitment to the progressive ideal. The tipping point was reached some time ago here. (The tipping point in this context is that point at which more people believe in the government’s role for their general well-being than believe in their own.) There is no turning back from that point. The eighth largest economy in the world has been bankrupted. Do you think the ripple that went through the markets when Dubai announced they couldn’t pay their debts was a little scary? California owes 27x what Dubai owes (and we don’t have an independently wealthy big brother like they do in Abu Dhabi… we just have Big Brother). Last year California paid people in IOUs and then allowed people to use them as currency. Think about that: California is so far down the progressive rabbit hole that it is issuing it’s own currency. This will happen again kn 2010 with 95% certainty.
Do you think GM was really too big to fail? That’s a question of self-delusion asked only by those that don’t care to understand the free market (over and over again). The question we should ask ourselves? Is California too big to fail? My heart goes out to those in the mid-west and especially the rust belt who have to live through this mess they created. But their folly is nothing compared to the collapse of California. The former suffers from a gaping wound that hurts and must be dealt with but the latter has an insidious disease very similar to Type II diabetes. It is brought on by an inability to trade off immediate gratification for long term health and is causing permanent and fatal damage on the inside, where it cannot be clearly seen, thus allowing the damaging behavior to continue unabated until it is too late. Talk about a cautionary tale…
December 23, 2009 — 8:49 am
Brian Brady says:
“Selling the country down the river by the representatives of a few states is one of the more despicable acts of collectivism in recent memory.”
Wait until Sean’s prophecy materializes. If CA is deemed “too big to fail”, and bailed out by the Feds when we file BK, how will the good citizens of OH, MI, and TX feel?
I hope y’all scream as loud as we do. I’m optimistic because I see the eventual CA restructuring as a healthy fix. God help us if we divide this nation with our weeds of collectivism
December 23, 2009 — 9:37 am
Teri Lussier says:
>The question we should ask ourselves? Is California too big to fail?
Or we could ask, Is California to big for the US to allow to fail?
That’s the difference from my view. We can and do run screaming from the Rustbelt, and I’m not arguing against that, people can move wherever they choose (although showing up with cameras in hand when it suits their purposes is exploitation). But who cares? We are obviously expendable.
California on the other hand? Do you honestly believe that the federal government will allow what is happening in the Rustbelt to happen in sunny CA?
All we are learning from this chapter of the cautionary tale is that if you are going to suck on the gov’t tit, live in a big state.
Everybody sing:
Well the first thing you know ol’ Jed’s a millionaire,
His kinfolk said, ‘Jed, move away from there!’
They said, ‘Californy is the place you oughtta be.’
So, they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.
Hills, that is, Swimmin’ pools, movie stars.
(that there was some fine banjo pickin’, wasn’t it?)
December 23, 2009 — 9:48 am
Teri Lussier says:
Ugh. Sean, Brian, Forgive the brain fart that is my previous comment.
Yeah. CA bailout= a big crap sammich.
December 23, 2009 — 12:25 pm
Vance Shutes says:
Greg,
An awesome post, which has surely touched some nerves this Holiday season. Thank you for writing it, and defending it so vigorously!
Is it any wonder why Michigan was one of only three states to lose population over the past year? Not when the mainstream view of the state is dominated by the tawdry life of the former mayor of Detroit. Not when the entitlement mentality is so firmly entrenched. Not when the combined tax rates (income, property, sales) are nearly the highest in the country! With all of those taxes, we still have serious structural deficits, and HORRIBLE roads!
I grew up here in Michigan, just 30 miles west of Detroit. When I was born, Detroit was to America what Silicon Valley is today – where the “best and brightest” went to further their careers (think Henry Ford and the “Whiz Kids”). All of that changed in the 1960s, sewing the seeds of decay in Detroit which are so visible today. Were it not for (the remnants of) the “Big Three” automakers, Detroit would be more akin to the Appalachain views described by Teri. It’s truly sad to those of us who remember much brighter days in Detroit.
Much wisdom has already been presented in the comments above on how Detroit might change to improve its economy. I’ll hold my pen on that today.
317 days until November 5, 2010, when we VOTE THE INCUMBENTS OUT!
Best wishes for a very Merry Christmas to all of the Bloodhounds!
The greatest gift of this season is that we readers get to soak up the wisdom shared here all year long. Thank you!
December 23, 2009 — 1:20 pm
Robert Worthington says:
The last two minutes of this video sent chills all over my body. I only live an 9 hour drive away Detroit. Maybe all the capitalist can move to Alaska and the left can have the rest. I’ve had it. Scary video but so true.
December 23, 2009 — 9:02 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>It attracts the intellectual and creative capital needed to spawn industries like technology, biotech, genetic engineering and will probably lead the green reconstruction movement.
been thinking about this, Brian. What is going to happen is that CA will put it’s capital to work on biotech, green building, etc, BUT, it will also put it’s insidious collectivism to work to force federal mandates that force other states to comply with environmental laws that will benefit business in CA, but may or may not have any positive affect elsewhere.
You can’t scream about that because it’s to your immediate benefit. We can scream, but, ya know, that’s so very easily dismissed and out-voted…
December 26, 2009 — 12:12 pm