A view

I have been reading a conservative blog. It is called “The View From 1776”. From that title you can imagine that it is living in the past. And it does. For instance, it believes that the American Constitution should be interpreted the way it was written, just like the Bible should be interpreted, as it was written. According to this blog the Constitution is not a living, breathing document. It shouldn’t be studied or interpreted in different ways. The View believes that America was based on one idea, individualism, and not the collective. However, it sees that the collective has taken over. This is mainly what The View rails against, that the United States is descending into socialism.

One thing The View is really against is the New Deal which was introduced during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. The New Deal is ”the social and economic program implemented from 1933 to the 2nd world war to combat the effects of the great depression of 1929. It used federal funds to strength the economy and relieve unemployment, chiefly through public projects, relief to farmers and small businessmen, economic controls and labor reforms”. The View argues that this policy has trodden on the very individualism American was founded on. The New Deal was a form of economic liberalism and redistribution, which conservative sight and detest as socialism. However, the New Deal saved capitalism from itself.

Recently The View posted an article entitled “ Gasoline Price Gouging?”. The impression I got from this blog is that complaining about high gasoline prices is un-American and doesn’t adhere to the rugged individualism America was founded on. It believes that complaining about high gasoline prices shows a lack of stoicism and a disregard for the free enterprise principles America was founded on, failings which highlight the socialistic tendencies America has adopted.

The View article about gasoline price gouging starts off, "One legacy of New Deal socialism is the now unquestioning assumption that the Federal government can and ought to fix whatever problems come our way, rather than allowing the ingenuity of millions of individuals to find accommodations and solution.”

Isn’t that an exaggeration, about our expectations of government? But, then, we exaggerate to emphasis a point. The View exaggerates here is to impress upon us that the American oil companies are behaving in the true American fashion, in a way that most Americans champion and in a way that the economy depends on to function efficiently. It also exaggerates to scold us for being cry babies. After all, we should also take responsibility for high oil prices because we, as owners of gas guzzlers and being the biggest consumers of energy in the world, have helped push up prices. It is saying something to the effect that we can’t have it both ways. It is saying that without the oil companies profiting we wouldn’t have any oil or gasoline, period.

However, complaining is part of the system and Americans shouldn’t be denied their bitching. Such bitching ‘pushes the envelop’ to find alternatives and, in the sentiment of The View, to ignite the “ingenuity of millions of individuals to find accommodations and solutions”. Complaining and bitching also is part of the American way. Its purpose is to keep the government and the system accountable and transparent. Without it thinks would be worse.

It is not wrong to expect government to help fix and correct things. That is what government is for. That is why it was invented, to maintain and facilitate a healthy infrastructure. For instance, the government should have done a better job after Katrina but instead it made things worse. The people's expectation of good government management after Katrina had nothing to do with the New Deal raising people's expectations as The View would argue. Had the American people a more competent government, whose incompetence, by the way, can’t be blamed on the New Deal, the pain of Katrina would have been far less and oil prices wouldn't be so high.

Maybe there is something there. Perhaps the New Deal can be blamed for the Bush government’s incompetence, like it is blamed by The View for everything else that besets America. If the Bush administration hadn’t been so consumed with trying to undo the legacy of the New Deal, like it was determined to do, it may have been more focused and competent with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and high oil prices.

On that note, can the New Deal and its legacy be blamed for the bungling of the Iraq war by the Bush administration?