Cigarettes, Alcohol, Twinkies and Prohibition

My wife and I spent last weekend with the extended family of some dear friends, which included people from 1 to 94 years of age. It was a fun time for everyone. In the end, we noticed something significant about the gathering. Throughout the entire weekend, there wasn’t one cigarette or one alcoholic drink and everyone still had fun, lots of fun.

Horatio Alger (1832-1899) was a prolific storyteller who’s books were typically about Americans overcoming obstacles and rising from adversity. The stories were optimistic depictions of America as the land of opportunity for those who work hard and do things right. The idea of picking oneself up by the bootstraps has often been disparaged as the Horatio Alger myth, suggesting that it is impossible with the caste system and class conflict built into American society.

July Fourth is Independence Day, a celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence two and a third centuries ago. Americans are moved by stirring renditions of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and get emotionally caught up in the excitement of the moment. But it is more important to have a thoughtful understanding of the ideas behind the songs and celebrations to carry with us the rest of the year.

Globalization is a contentious subject, with passionate partisans on both sides of the issue. Proponents talk about the benefits of a global economy while the detractors emphasize the evils of concentrated economic power in the hands of a small number of large international organizations. Both sides are correct, but they are talking about different things.

The market is a generic term used to understand how an economy works. Though the word is sometimes used to describe a particular place where people do business, in more general terms, it is just the composite of the transactions of many interacting people, often over a wide geographic area. Everything that happens in markets is the result of individual people making decisions based on their own knowledge, assumptions, and desires.

Enemies of freedom and the truth use a powerful tool try to marginalize and discredit those who oppose them. That tool is name-calling. There are things that people, in general, abhor, such as violence, hatred, murder and theft. If those negative connotations can be attached to names, and those names attached to individuals, then those individuals will be viewed in a negative way, as having those bad attributes. Words such as fundamentalist, extremist, homegrown terrorist and hate criminal come to mind.

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

Another son is getting married this weekend, and my wife and I spent some time going through old pictures for a slide show. It was a great joy to remember innumerable events of his childhood. It is easy to look back and remember the many happy, fun times. Years removed from the day-to-day living, it is not difficult to count the blessings. It is a little harder to do when we are in the thick of things, when life is difficult, and things aren’t going according to plan.

Everything we do in life is a gamble. Our house could burn down or an earthquake could shake it down. Our stock investment could crash or our car could crash. These things happen on some fairly regular basis in the world, yet all of us have some semblance of order in our lives. There is a set of circumstances which we consider normal.

In 1938, historian W. E. Woodward made a profound observation about the state of society throughout history: “Liberty implies responsibility, and the vast majority of mankind has always hated responsibility worse than death. So in all ages, men have run around holding liberty in their hands, holding it out before them as one holds a golden vessel, offering it to anyone who possesses enough vulgar enterprise to take it away from them.”