Every now and then you read something that (to borrow two tired clichés) cuts through the clutter and calls a spade a spade. Victor Davis Hanson offers such a read this morning at RCP.
Granted, I don’t agree with everything Hanson posits in this piece (e.g., his suggestion that 40% of the population “should stick to renting”) — but, on balance, his essay is a good wake-up call … for all of us. Plus, the concluding paragraphs are pure gold:
In a larger sense, this zeal for quick profits and easy money reflected an oblivious too-good-to-be-true culture in which we drove larger cars but demanded more oil drilling from everyone except ourselves. We expected both expanded government entitlements and lower taxes.
Our government borrowed ever more money from foreign creditors, because it was a collective reflection of our own profligate financial habits. Of course, we should reform Wall Street and Washington — and punish severely the crooks in both places. But Americans should remember that Frankenstein was not the name of the monster but of its creator.