Torch, Winter 2012

that would have made Samuel Adams pick up a musket is more along the lines of, “Whatever, just as long as I can make my flight and check out the new episode of Glee on my smartphone.” Fear Over Finances Beyond physical safety, our fear of the economic future is perhaps even more potent. America’s economy has been stagnant, at best, for the better part of the past four years. Our unemployment rate has hovered between eight and 10 percent since the beginning of 2009, and real estate values have not yet rebounded to their precrash levels. The Dow Jones industrial average has risen and fallen like rolling terrain, and some of Europe’s economies (Greece, Italy, and Spain) may be on the brink of total collapse. Exacerbating the crisis, America’s government continues to spend money we simply do not have. If you go to usdebtclock.org, you will see a running tally of America’s national debt, which is the amount we owe, as a nation, to our various creditors. As of this writing, the clock is just over $15 trillion. How much is $15 trillion? In $1 bills, it would wrap around the earth’s equator 58,000 times. This debt has increased dramatically in a short period — almost 50 percent since 2008. In short, times are bad. This economic crisis has had two impacts. First, it was used to justify the massive spending just noted. Both President Bush (in the form of TARP) and President Obama (with his first stimulus effort), and Republicans and Democrats in Congress, were afraid to do nothing. President Bush was fearful that anything short of a full bailout of our banking system would be catastrophic. President Obama believed that additional stimulus was necessary to avoid increased unemployment. For the most part, members of Congress went along with these arguments due to their own fears of losing future elections. Simple, basic fear caused all of Washington, D.C., to spend, spend, and spend in 2008 and 2009. Second, and currently, the economic crisis, and the rampant spending that followed, has provided Republicans with the opportunity to attack President Obama and the Democrats. While there is room for valid criticism, Republicans and conservatives have begun to stoke the citizenry’s fear of the economic future for their own gain. In an amusing, and not necessarily representative, example, Mark Steyn, the gifted pundit, recently compared the American political economy to the famed Titanic . He noted, “the USS Spendaholic is a rusting hulk encrusted Winter 2012 | TORCH 11