My grandmother had an expression, more a worldview, the way in which she separated the winners from the losers in life. If she really wanted to insult someone she would say: “I don’t understand why that person has let himself go.”
Irma Wiseman lived to 94 years old, almost the full breadth of the 20th Century from 1903 to 1997. She was a lifelong Republican, mostly because she saw herself as an American, but also the daughter of an assimilated German Jew, and therefore better than everyone else, most particularly the rabble in the Democratic Party, then and if she were alive today, even now.
If she were alive today, she would also say, how could the United Stated “let itself go?” How can the country have a federal debt of $16 trillion dollars? How can 47 million Americans be on food stamps, about one-sixth of the overall population and apparently nearly all of them have no sense of personal pride or shame? To my grandmother, spending less than you made would not be called that dirty word, “austerity,” she would have called it: “living within one’s means.”
Of course, my grandmother was exceptional. She and her older sister graduated from law school in the 1920s, when most American women stopped their formal educations after high school if they even got that far. My grandmother did not marry until she was 29 years of age and didn’t have children until she was 35 years old, which made her ancient at that time in postponing parenthood. When her husband died of leukemia in the 1950s, she never dated again, preferring to live alone, have a career, and not having to pick up any other man’s dirty socks, she said to me in her own words. Mrs. Ulrich (as she was sometimes known, as she reverted to using her maiden name after her husband passed away) saved money, invested conservatively in stocks, and eventually died leaving an inheritance for her grandchildren.
Without going to deeply into her faults, out of respect for the deceased, my grandmother was of that pre-1960s generation that looked askance at the burgeoning drug culture while anesthetizing herself quite freely with copious amounts of alcohol, Scotch whiskey being her drink of choice. She was a quintessential New Yorker, who resided quietly in an apartment building that overlooked Riverside Park and the Hudson River on Manhattan’s West Side. She believed in going to work and earning a paycheck. She didn’t have a racist bone in her body and believed in the American meritocracy. She smoked cigarettes zealously, as many people did then. She didn’t think the world owed her a living. She was discriminated against in the workforce as a woman, but would not have been one to make a stink about it and did not.
My grandmother would be disheartened with most of America’s irresoluteness, besides say, the Tea Party, and the military, as she was also proud of two of her grandchildren who served in the Air Force. Although my grandmother was a City of New York employee, she was disgusted by patronage, and would find today’s public sector unions appalling, preferring civil service rules, instead. She would be perturbed by the decrepitude of the nation’s public schools and their surrender to the rapacious teachers’ unions. She would be shocked that both parties in Washington apparently believe that printing money and growing deficits passes for stewardship of the nation’s many economic needs.
Mostly she would see a country today that has “let itself go:” Farmers and ranchers who won’t plant and grow food without government subsidies; the failure of public housing; Corporations that say they cannot function without government support. And families that neglect to take care of their own members and who prefer to rely on public handouts.
So few people want to arise from their lethargy and advocate for American principles and values, such as personal thrift and individual responsibility. Many people perhaps would do more except for fear of the media branding them a cold-hearted Republican, or worse, a racist. Truly, the country, and a new generation of patriots will have to “rise up” to save the United States. Frankly, it may take 100 years of trying considering we have already experienced 100 years of “progressive, liberal Statism,” that got us in this mess in the first place when we turned our back on the Constitution.
I know that I am personally “better off” than I was four years ago when President Obama was first elected, but it is not because of him, nor of his policies. No, sir, Mr. President, I DID build it. I got up every morning and went to work and did not quit, even while the taxman harassed my every step in order that money could be transferred from the productive class to the Entitlement Class.
Everyday people complain that 45 percent of Americans pay no federal taxes. Yes, we have a populace that pays no taxes and votes for representatives and senators to deliver the goodies, specifically, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, which dwarf all other items in the United States’ budget. In the process, we are bankrupting ourselves, our country, our children, and our children’s children. Every day we seem to want to choose the Greek Solution of generating evermore debt, except we call it Quantitative Easing, that’s so much more a nicer name for it.
Still this remains a great country, with tremendous freedoms and opportunities for creative hard-working people. However, how will we keep what we have if we keep “letting ourselves go?”
Daniel Wiseman is an independent political commentator, who focuses on national and international affairs. He spent nine years as a professional journalist in Wyoming before working in fund-raising, non-profit management, and is now working in New York City. Wiseman focuses his writing on how to bring the United States back to its Constitutional moorings. He writes exclusively for Canada Free Press.
