Signs of the Times; F. DeArmond

Fred DeArmond Signs of the Times THIS AGE in which we are living has been described in a copious flow of superlatives, pro and con. To repeat from Charles Dickens's well-known opening paragraph in A Tale of Two Cities, a novel of the French Revo lution and relating to the European scene about 1789, would be under stating the case for the 1970s and 1980s: (1t was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it •was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair .... " Mr. DeArmond has specialized in sales, writing and businessconsultation on personnel training. He has contributed to numerous periodicals and written sev eral books. His most recent book, Empire of the Masses: The Decline of Taste In America, is available from Dorrance and Co., 35 Cricket litrrace, Ardmore, PA 19003; the 146-pagehardcover at $6.95 is shipped postpaid if check accompanies order.

Many of our top thinkers have tried to answer the persistent query: What principally does distinguish these times from all those that went before? One conspicuous answer was that of Andre Malraux, elderly French author and Minister of State for Cultural Affairs under President Charles de Gaulle back in the 1960s. His answer was reported and ana lyzed by journalist and theatrical manager Guy Suares in his book, Malraux-Past, Present, and Future (Little, Brown & Co., 1974). Malraux said at that time that the first and most distinguishing mark of the existing Western civilization is ((a violent sense of transience." His second identification, ((a civili zation without recognized values," is clearly related to this ((violent sense of transience." Values-moral, practical and intellectual-are sub331 332 THE FREEMAN June sumed in the new thought. That judgment has been echoed by many sources. Environmental changes are cataclysmic, involving mob psychol ogy, erratic leadership methods, public administrative chaos, and ar bitrary judicial processes. Pursued with misguided zeal, these aberra tions have fed the flames of transi tion through which the world is whizzing.

The courts, which should be a sta bilizing influence, are in reality up setting long-cherished traditions on the theory that law and government are constantly changing almost ev erything, ((to keep up with the times." The U.S. Supreme Court in an infa mous eight-to-one decision reversed the trial conviction of a brutal mur derer because there had not been, as the defense claimed, enough women on the trial jury to assure a gender balance. The same body legalized abortion and even ordered that pregnant women who resort to this procedure shall, if they are indigent, have the expense borne by the fed eral government. That judicial colossus, through its district judges, presumes to direct a local school board far from the seat of authority how to manage its own schools, There is talk that the courts will force Amtrak to cancel its spe cial low fares for children on the ground of discrimination. In the name of making every citizen equal in every respect-the one-man, onevote principle-Washington seized controls constitutionally intended to be exercised by state and municipal authorities or by employers and state and municipal bodies.

The courts are now freely approv ing faked insanity pleas as excuses for the most flagrant crimes. Result: dangerous, mad-dog criminals re leased to make the streets and roads unsafe for honest citizens. A Con gress that had condemned a Presi dent for his candor in private con versations, as recorded on confiscated tapes, fails to impose a penalty on certain of its own members con victed of accepting bribes from a for eign government. A Mobile Population More than forty per cent of Amer icans are said to change their place of residence annually-another form of transience. Many of the names on world maps have been changed by the dictates of politics, until any world atlas as much as twenty years old is quite out of date. In his epochal books on economics, John Maynard Keynes attempted to contradict and subvert the basic truths of economic life. Dr. Karl Menninger, riding on a wave of pop ularity as the people's psychiatrist, preached that the punishment of crime is itself worse than the actions for which criminals are punished.

Two educators of some note lent themselves to the authorship of a 1981 SIGNS OF 'THE TIMES 333 book, one principle of which is the silly assertion that the ability to read well is not essential to a liberal ed ucation (Postman and Weingartner, The School Book, Delacorte Press, 1973). There. are foreboding signs in the Judeo-Christian world of the aban donment of the Ten Command ments. This would be in the pre sumed interest of keeping up with progress. Reservations are needed, we hear, to construct a platform broad enough for any religious man or woman to stand on. It might change No.8 to, ~~Thou shalt not steal from a poor man." You may be sure that some ~~improvements" in the interest ofliberal ~~realism" would be edited into No.·7,which prohibits adultery, in order to assuage the consciences of impious but uneasy moderns. Americans and some other con temporaries seem to be wholly ob sessed with the notion that all change is necessarily progress. They blandly assume that individual freedom can be realized only in a democracy, and that a pure democracy is the stan dard system of approach. to perfec tion, regardless of the stage of civi lization reached by a populace.

Andre Malraux believed there is a third distinguishing factor in the present Western civilization. It is ~~a civilization cut off from the cosmos"-from all that has gone be fore us. We have inherited so much from earlier ages that our leading minds seem incapable of assimilat ing it all. Have we gone as far as science can take us? We have walked on the moon; now what is next--- to jump off into suicide? The Greek civilization was linked to the past by its gods. While Christ ian civilization ~~at its height pro vides strong links between man and the Christian Cosmos," our culture has culminated in Marxism, accord ing to Malraux. Although not named in the Suares interview, it appears there is an other distinction that especially marks the times in which we live. That is the supreme ego of the dom inant generation of today. In no ear lier annals of the past that I have scanned are found the condescen sion of assumed superiority mani fested by most spokesmen of our times.

Modern ProphetsMuch Indebtedto Pioneers To read or listen to the modern prophets in a believing spirit is to view our contemporary scientific, philosophical, and literary giants as the voices of a new and greater race of the genus homo. Usually they make little or no acknowledgment of the enormous debt owed to the pi oneer thinkers going back through Herbert Spencer, Petrarch, and all the others even to Aristotle. Ein stein's ~~discovery" of relativity was 334 THE FREEMAN made from his perch on the broad shoulders of Galileo. The recent squad of physicists who saw and demonstrated the awesome possibil ities in splitting the atom had for their start the work done by John Dalton, Hendrik Lorentz, and a long catalogue of others. Even Lucretius, the Roman poet of the first century B.C., knew about the atom and something of its potential for· good or evil. There are palpable signs in the United States of this increasingly ttviolent sense of transience." They are more visible to the elders who have lived long enough to appraise soundly the mental balance of ma turity. An example of change in the right direction is the current recog nition of Alexander Hamilton, sub ject of a recent new biography by Forrest McDonald (Norton). More than any other thinker of his time, Hamilton conceived the enormous potential of his country as a vast industrial world force. This recogni tion is all the more remarkable in that such insight comes notwith standing the doom chorus from wordy liberals who never have understood the America conceived by Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, and their asso ciates in our national Hall of Fame.

Change is inevitable, although aggravated by that old, hungry, egalitarian urge that tends to dis tort human motives. The ideal in government, industry, family life, and ttthe pursuit of happiness" gen erally is collective stability. The best signs of these times are those that point toward restoration of that es sentially stable society, the frame work of which our late 18th century wise men provided. The United States is tough and can take punish ment. It can realize the thwarted hopes of the best minds of 1787 through the present exercise of re straint, balance, and some timely sacrifice. , IDEAS ON LIBERTY Foundations of Progress THE COMMON MAN, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice.

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET DonaldJ. Senese Government Intervention Creates Chaos, Not Jobs STUDENTS OF HISTORY are familiar with the significant truth embodied in the often quoted remark of the writer and philosopher George San tayana in his work The Life of Rea son: ~~Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This axiom holds true for those proponents of governmental inter ventionism in the economy who view goyernment as the instrument to bring economic prosperity. through government-sponsored jobs •creation and job training programs. The proponents of this economic interventionism use a variety of ap proaches to involve government in the market place-vocational train ing, public service employment, onDr. Donald J. senese, a former associate professor of history at Radford University, Is a senior Research Associate with the House Republican StUdy Commit tee, U.S. House of Representatives.