Nothing To Fear But Fearlessness Itself?

theodp writes "In a post last August, Robert X. Cringely voiced fears that Goldman Sachs and others were not so much evil as 'clueless about the implications of their work,' leaving it up to the government to fix any mess they leave behind. 'But what if government runs out of options,' worried Cringely. 'Our economic policy doesn't imagine it, nor does our foreign policy, because superpowers don't acknowledge weakness.' And now his fears are echoed in a WSJ opinion piece by Peggy Noonan titled 'We're Governed by Callous Children.' She writes, 'We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists — they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.' With apologies to FDR, do we have nothing to fear but fearlessness itself?"

Comments

Re:Come to California...

[YrWrstNtmr]

Instead you re-elected Granholm, who had done nothing her first four years and hasn't done anything the second four years. She's just perpetuated the "do nothing and government will take care of you like a big daddy" welfare state. She's encouraged sloth not industriousness.

A politicians main desire is to get elected, or reelected. Whomever they have to appeal to to make that happen.
The constituency that elected Granholm (and others) completely buys into the concept of "do nothing and government will take care of you like a big daddy". In other words, 'gimme free money'.

She's encouraging sloth only tangentially. The main purpose is to get (re)elected.

Re:It's not fearlessness that's the problem

[Mr. Slippery]

Neither of those sound very left/right to me, more sanity vs. disturbed.

Since the Republican Party is a collation of the aristocrat class and its lackeys with the Religious Right, left/right very often is sanity vs. disturbed -- or at least, informed versus ignorant. To be socially conservative is, at heart, to be anti-intellectual.

The education system is run by the "left wing" to the extent that teachers are educated people, and socially conservative views are incompatible with education.

Re:Why should we be surprised

[benjamindees]

You don't seem to understand that there is no technological limit to the extension of human life. The practical limit to a person's lifespan then becomes the amount of work and resources that you are able to expropriate in order to support this endeavour.

So, again I ask: where the hell do you expect to find those resources and how do you intend to expropriate them? How many generations do you expect to fall for this ponzi scheme before it collapses?

Re:Come to California...

[commodore64_love]

How is it that, with such easy access to information, people still think the crash had anything to do with business? It was the Congress under Bill Clinton that mandated banks sell homes to people without money ("no money down" mortgages), and banks that said "no sorry you don't have enough cash" were subject to prosecution to racial discrimination. So rather than be prosecuted by Congress, the banks just said "yes" to everything, thereby created an artificial housing bubble which eventually burst.

Also like it or not, you'd be jobless without business. Don't believe me? Go to Michigan and try to find a job. Even during the boom (mid-2000s) Michigan was in sad shape because without businesses in that state, there's no place to work.

BTW you probably won't believe my first paragraph, so here's the videos so you can see yourself. Even after Bush, McCain, and other republicans tried to fix the impending housing bubble, Democrats refused to listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW5qKYfqALE Congressman Frank says the housing bubble is a-okay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64 (time stamp 2:00) "to take greater risks with families that can not afford mortgages"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxMInSfanqg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM (one Democrat after another telling Bush/McCain they have nothing to wrroy about)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohp5IX3y098 The Obama and Housing Bubble connection. - Okay well you know how to search youtube as easily as I can. There are dozens of these videos, showing the Republicans argue to end the Clinton-era HUD program for "no money down" mortgages, but the Democrats stubbornly insisted the program should continue.