Here we stand at the start of the year 2009 as bewildered as ever about the best way to manage our affairs and maintain a civilization that is able to sustain itself and provide us with a style of life we deem necessary for our continued survival and development as a species. But we have been in similar situations before as the predicament we now face seems to be our perennial preoccupation.
Still, I consider myself lucky to have been born when I was because, as a war baby, I was slightly older than the baby boomers I grew up with. It meant that when they were at a stage in their lives where they developed at their fastest rate, I had the luxury of being detached from their activities and their debates when it was necessary for me to be, and the option to immerse myself in them when I felt it was time for me to do so. Thus, I was an elder observer when I needed to see what was done from a distance, or a close participant when the situation required that I add my two cents worth to what was said and take the criticism for it.
These were the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies when a new theory was being debated left and right but never formulated to the satisfaction of anyone. The political Left was saying that small criminals who engage in reprehensible activities such as rob a bank or mug an old lady do so because they are pushed by the desperate situations in which they find themselves. But as certain as a classical physicist can be about Newton’s laws of motion and energy, mainly the one which says that for every action there is a reaction equal in force and opposite in direction, the ideas of the Left caused the political Right to respond as mechanically as you can imagine and speak of individual responsibility.
The Left went on to explain that because the desperate situations were encouraged by the apathy of a neglectful society, the responsibility for the crimes fell on the shoulders of society and not those of the individuals who committed the crimes. But the Right which stood at the opposite side of the political divide went on to assert that the crimes must be shouldered by no one but the culprits themselves and them alone. And so the political divide became a cultural one as well, and a fault line was dug up between the two sides along which stood the protagonists from where they darted their hardest lectures at each other.
The political Left proposed that to remedy the situation more rehabilitation centers be built so as to take in the desperate individuals who are the real victims of the difficult situations. And the movement went on to demand that those who stray from the norm and engage in antisocial activities be given more education and better psychiatric care to boost their self-esteem and make them behave like good citizens again. Thus, together with the Leftist diagnosis came a possible remedy, something that made the population at large understand the theory better and sympathize with it to some degree. But let it be said that the public gave the theory no more weight or importance than that.
Contrasting the stand of the Left was the theory proposed by the Right which argued that more cops should be fielded on the streets of the nation to catch and to deter the culprits who, once they are caught, must be thrown in jail where they will be made to serve more time than the Leftist judges have cared to throw at them so far. In addition to that, as indeed it was legislated much later on, the criminals were treated with the notion of a "three strikes and you’re out" possibility to make them understand that society is putting a price not only on the severity of the crimes they commit but the frequency with which they may commit them even if the crimes are of minimum severity and little damage to society.
Those debates ended in a draw as no side was able to throw their darts hard enough at the other to knock them off their debating pedestals, and the social arguments did very little to determine the outcome of any election. Instead, the nation as a whole oscillated between electing more candidates of the Left or more of the Right depending on the direction from which the economic wind was blowing at the time of every election. And this reality highlighted the neutrality of the population with regard to social issues, a fact that was obvious to everyone at the outset given that the accompanying arguments were treated with no more seriousness than a curious look and a disinterested shrug.
No more seriousness, that is until now, as the political issues of the day and the social ones began to converge and to become one and the same cause. And the new situation has paved the way for those who champion the interests of Main Street to find themselves in the same camp as those who champion the interests of Wall Street. It is as if you were asked to imagine the head of the UAW and that of GM sitting not at apposite sides of a table bickering about a new labor agreement but on the same side of the table facing a hostile foe that takes a sadistic delight at interrogating them from the opposite side of a congressional chamber of torture.
And in fact, this is what happened as the old antagonists sat shoulder to shoulder and sang in unison from the same book of hymns to fight the battle they together unleashed against a looming economic crisis which promised to disintegrate the republic of the free and the rest of the developed world alongside those whom they believe are yet to be free and be fully developed.
More astonishingly than this is the fact that what is happening now is not only that the political winds have shifted in direction but that the views of the Left and those of the Right have reversed themselves and the protagonists have swapped their traditional positions. The Left is now asking for more regulations and more inspectors to police the one and only street that is known as Wall Street, a move that parallels the increased number of cops that the Right used to call for in order to police all the streets of the nation.
On the other hand, the Right is now asking for less interference on Wall Street by any authority whatsoever because, as it says, it still believes in the power of the invisible hand that Adam Smith wrote about to come to the rescue and correct the situation. The hand will do the work in its own subtle ways and will do it when the time is right, says the political subgroup of the Rightist movement, even though the economic subgroup of the same movement is beginning to question its old assumptions.
Of course, you can tell that a publication such as the Wall Street Journal was on the side that lectured on individual responsibility and more cops on the streets of the nation. And so here is the funny part that is not funny anymore as the Journal has tried to pick up the pieces following the implosion of the Ponzi scheme of the century; that scheme which was revealed in the wake of the near collapse of the planet’s economy. And bear in mind that these were a scheme and a collapse that were not the work of the antisocial elements of society but the work of the socialites who mingle with each other and mingle with no one else whether you see them partying in upscale Manhattan or you catch them socializing in similar places everywhere else on the planet.
And so it was with their usual flair for showing authority over the subject they are discussing that the editors of the Wall Street Journal declared the following: "The real lesson here is about men, not markets. Human nature doesn't change, and crooks will always be with us … As Shakespeare understood, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves." That’s ourselves in the plural which here means all of society. You see my friend, these editors are now saying that the responsibility for the crimes committed on Wall Street must fall on the shoulders of society and not the shoulders of the individuals who commit them. And they no longer insist that the crimes be shouldered by the culprits themselves and them alone. This is what is called doing a 180.
The Journal published this declaration on December 15, 2008 in an editorial titled: "Madoff and Markets" and a subtitle that went this way: "Shakespeare is a better investor than the SEC". But go over the entire editorial, my friend, and you will see that not a single word was said about going after those crooks to jail them or even revoke their right to trade again.
In consequence of all this, it is not too difficult to conclude that in the understanding of the Wall Street Journal, the stars that were exonerated by Shakespeare are nothing more than the invisible hand of Adam Smith. And who would understand what Shakespeare understood more than the Journal for, when they speak of the playwright, you can take what they say to the bank or better still, take it to Bernard Madoff who will invest it for you with the same flair and authority that the Wall Street Journal is showing on matters relating to Shakespeare.
You may do that if you want or you may give the situation a more critical look and conclude that the Wall Street Journal advocates a theory that was not alluded to by William Shakespeare but one that was attributed to another famous Englishman, one named Charles Darwin. But let me hastily add that Darwin is innocent of the many interpretations that were attributed to him or to his theories, let alone the new twists that the Journal seems to inject into the debate. And these are twists that boil down to this: The world will be better off without regulations to restrict the mighty crooks, and will be better off without cops to go after them when they commit the kind of crimes that only they are capable of committing.
Darwin never said that survival to the fittest is a condition that can be emulated or that must be nurtured, yet this is what the Journal is advocating when it calls for less regulation on Wall Street or no regulation at all. And given that the most fundamental belief of the Conservative movement is to the effect that government exists to protect the people from each other, the journal has made a mockery of Conservatism by violating this belief. And the journal commits such violation every time it advocates that the predators on Wall Street be given free range to feed on those who cannot protect themselves from a savage capitalism that is more savage than it is capitalism.
Which leaves us with one puzzle to solve: To which philosophy does the Wall Street Journal adhere anyway? In other words, do these people know what the heck it is that they believe in? Do they believe in anything at all?