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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
I turned off Freeport road,
into a shallow valley of worn farmland,
empty warehouse and factory piles
of rusted shorn rail heaps,
and copper yard refuge,
trestle bridge fallen to despairing blight.
Gone are those halcyon days,
gone forever into a bended road,
down to a gorge of greed,
global growth, the sellout, left us waysided,
forgotten, forlorn are these small scripts
of towns on a tattered map.
Lincoln spoke here, Douglas too,
far back, into our mystical nation’s past,
extinguished from myth
and books now forbidden,
a glory-full history smeared clean,
into a future abyss, to be written anew.
But alas, the story stays the same,
for death and destruction
surely will follow these revolutions
of dangerous, deluded and deadly dreams.
In the 1990s, Japan began to move manufacturing offshore. The Kieretsu seemed to believe they could increase profits by lowering their costs of production and reduce their environmental impact in the home islands. Not long after the single children of workers who toiled 70 hours a week, lived in 700 square foot apartments, and vacationed corporate resorts chose not to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Women didn’t want to stop working, marry, and stay home with their one child. Men wanted more from life. And the economy slipped into disfunction.
Americans with eyes and ears could see the inevitable result of similar actions by American corporations. But years of inflation, union intransigence and corruption, consumer indifference to sourcing, and corporate deception kept voters and shoppers from objecting to the impending doom of middle America. Leftist conquest of public schools and academia made manufacturing and mining dirty words. And America’s economy shifted from making things to making money. The biggest maker of money was the central government, that printed money from thin air to expand benefits and enrich not the people but the corporations that make medicine and junk food.
Now we are confronted with two choices, both vital to survival of the republic. Shall we resume making goods and mining for energy and materials in the USA? Shall we return the civic culture to one of faith in Judeo-Christian values? Unless the nation answers yes to both questions, we shall become a byword.
“And America’s economy shifted from making things to making money.” Real wages have gone up over time. A country gets wealthier by becoming more productive.
You “make money” providing things people want. (See Adam Smith’s “the butcher, baker…”) Supplying what people want: some concept!
As for “indifference to sourcing,” this just in from the beginning of humans trading: consumers are richer when prices are lower. When getting major work done do you seek bids?
Trade surpluses with the U.S. have enabled foreign investment in the U.S. How can people in other countries get the U.S. dollars they need to invest in the U.S. if their own country doesn’t have a trade surplus with the U.S.?
Inflation is NOT making money — it is STEALING money. It is the government COUNTERFEITING money.
If a common criminal were making counterfeit money you wouldn’t call it making money but stealing money.
Judeo-Christian values? The Judeo-Christian values of self-sacrifice are precisely the ethics that are destroying America.
“The roots of America’s welfare state lie in the Populist-Progressive Era of the late 19th century and early 20th century, especially with the Protestant social gospel movement, which held that Christian ethics and “social justice” should drive public policy, including wealth redistribution, trust-busting, graduated tax rates to punish the rich, cradle-to-grave handouts, and missionary-style imperialistic ventures abroad to spread the faith and make the world “safe for democracy.” The concept of social justice, which jettisoned the idea that we actually earn and deserve what we get in life, was first adopted by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in the 1840s, as drawn from the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.” – “Holy Scripture and the Welfare State” by Richard M. Salsman
Self-sacrifice is destroying America? Is it Dumb Statement Monday again already? It is those not willing to sacrifice enough to improve their own lot in life who are liabilities in the U.S. As much as it may upset you, the fact is this country was built on Christian values. The people who came to the U.S. and made if better engaged in “self-sacrifice.”
What we need far less of is government taking our earnings from us to give it to those who didn’t earn it.
Thank you. I read it/heard it somewhat set to music and at the same time incredibly stark. The poem is wonderful and heartbreaking, as we all see, feel, and are living in exactly what you speak of.
Since Biden was selling America out to China cutting off our Fossil Fuels Opening our Borders and inviting in all those Illegal Aliens/Future Democrat Voters and Supporters then wants to steal the Private Property/Farmland to make their phony Carbon Capture System(Climate Scam)him and his fellow Globalists the UN/CFR Etc. and the rest of them all