Let it be known that if necessity is the mother of
invention, then penury must be the father of resilience. This is most likely
what the economic historian of Bret Stephens imagination will be telling her
students in the year 2050. You can check on his thinking in this regard by
reading: “The Marvel of American Resilience,” his latest column which also came
under the subtitle: “Autocrats can always cultivate prodigies. The question is
what to do with the remaining 99%.” It was published on December 23, 2014 in
the Wall Street Journal.
Stephens started with an idea that is worth exploring but
quickly fell into the trap of looking at the world through the lens of politics
and jingoism, thus wrote a lousy column. The reality of our world is that no
two cultures are the same which is why things happen in one culture before they
do in another. And given that some things happen in America
before they do in other places, it is worth exploring what America has
that others may lack.
The trouble is that our author disabled himself before
writing the first sentence by assuming that only “non-autocratic” forms of
governance can be home to resilience and innovation. In taking this stance, he
dismissed thousands of years of progress in science and technology before what
he would call a “liberal democracy” was first established. To justify his
thinking, he came up with this bizarre explanation: “Autocracies can cultivate
chess champions, piano prodigies and nuclear engineers; [their] quandary is
what to do with the remaining 99%. They have no answer, other than administer,
dictate and repress.” What on earth does that mean?
Hey Bret, please tell us: who do you think are (or are not)
the resilient innovators? Are they the autocratic rulers or the chess
champions, the piano players and the nuclear engineers? And while you're at it;
who designed and built the pyramids? The pharaohs that used them, or the
engineers of their time? Who invented the fireworks, the china and the silk
fabrics? Were they the iron-fisted ruling dynasties, or the resilient
innovators of their time? And who invented the jet engine and the rocket? Was
it Hitler himself or the German engineers of the Nazi era?
Stephens also seems to make a big deal out of the fact that America has
gone full speed ahead in the use of fracking. What must be said is that he
misses something in this regard … perhaps because, like he says, he “grew up as
an American living abroad.” In fact, it was in the year 1973 that the North
American Continent feared it was in danger of losing the lifestyle it had grown
accustomed to; a fear that was brought about by the oil embargo which the Arabs
imposed on America to punish it for coming to the aid of Israel as they were
chasing the Jews out of the lands that the latter had been occupying since
1967.
This is when the debate began in earnest about developing
the Canadian Tar Sands and the American Shale oil deposits. Research started
immediately in order to determine a way to do this, and the result was that the
best option was to start with the Tar Sands. As to the development of the Shale
Oil deposits, the research never stopped in the States or in Canada . Large
numbers of researchers in independent labs as well as government and university
labs participated in the effort, and countless papers were written about the
progress that was being made – every step of the way. In fact, this is how
these things are done.
Now contrast that reality with what a columnist accustomed
to fantasy and self-delusion has written. Having never done science, having
never participated in the development of technology, having never worked with
his hands, Bret Stephens imagines that fracking has appeared on the scene
spontaneously by the conversion of the following circumstances: “fracking
happened in the U.S.
because Americans have property rights to the minerals under their yards. And
because the federal government wasn't really paying attention. And because
against-the-grain entrepreneurs like George Mitchell and Harold Hamm couldn't
be made to bow to the consensus of experts. And because our capital markets
were willing to bet against those experts.” Really? This is like watching a
high powered pump spewing organic fertilizer onto a field.
Let a teacher in 2050 say something like this to her
students, and you can bet that there will be at least one parent who will
demand that she be sent to learn what she never did in real life, relying
instead, as she does, on the output of an army of lightweight intellects such
as those who took control of the so-called think-tanks and the media in the
latter part of the Twentieth Century, and gave the Americans what Stephens
admits has been: “the wretched state of their schools, the paralyzed nature of
their politics, their mounting fiscal burdens and the prediction of impending
decline.”