Will You Delay Short-term Gratification for Your Country?

“The economic crisis now breaking upon us will be both a political and cultural event that may well be a turning point in our nation’s history as consequential as the Great Depression. Which, by the way, is the historical standard to which some smart people—like former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan—are comparing this event... The cultural roots of this crisis have to do with Americans’ refusal to recognize natural limits. Americans have lost the ascetic virtue of self-discipline and have become impatient with the idea of constraints on their individual will. This is deeply rooted in American history and psychology... Our liberation from natural and traditional constraints can only continue in an atmosphere of steady, broad-based material progress, which, aside from the 1970s stagflation lull, we’ve experienced since World War II ended the Depression... Yet we cannot blame our politicians for failing to lead us, because they are the products of a consumerist culture that does not take ‘no’ for an answer. How many politicians of either party could hope to win office by telling voters we have a responsibility to delay short-term gratification for the long-term good of the country?”

—Rod Dreher