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Posted on 12/03/2008 1:40:00 PM PST by NYer
“Pride cometh before a fall.” It’s an Old Testament proverb, it’s the classic theme of Greek tragedy, and it’s a lesson we observe in our lives again and again. So how come we never seem to learn to avoid it — or exploit it?
What’s more, pride always seems to come before a fall in more or less the same way.
Take the economy, for example, and consider three things pride does — and the havoc that follows.
First, pride makes us forget first principles. In the 21st century economy, we got so used to having more and more money that we forgot that it’s necessary to save. Your mortgage is supposed to be a certain percentage of your income. You aren’t supposed to live beyond your means.
But as the economy grew more and more, we began to say, “It’s a good thing we live in a time when we don’t have to follow all those old rules.” When it turned out we weren’t exempt after all, it was too late.
The second thing pride does: It makes us lose our vigilance. We forget to be on the lookout for the telltale signs of disaster ahead.
With the economy, we saw the dot-com bubble burst and didn’t change our behavior. We watched the housing market collapse and didn’t change our behavior. Then we saw the mortgage crisis hit as gas prices skyrocketed and we started to sound the alarm, but not loudly, and not in time.
A third effect of pride: We use our imagination to show off instead of to build. We stop elaborating big plans and start planning big elaborations.
Our economy was built by entrepreneurial imagination. Bold businesses took risks to create opportunities where none existed before. We created whole industries and new streams for old industries.
But with pride comes complacency, and complacency and imagination are a volatile brew. Our best business minds still found great new opportunities and new streams of revenue — but this time it was about maximizing and displaying wealth instead of building industries and creating opportunities.
Whether it’s the Lehman Brothers’ flashy Times Square Jumbotron that cost $500,000 to run, the infamous AIG excesses, or the extravagant expenditures revealed in the trials of CEOs, a lot of pride seemed to come before a lot of falls.
We can see this same pattern in Washington, D.C.
The GOP rose to power in Congress in 1992 on a set of principles enumerated in its Contract With America. The Republicans ended perks for members of Congress and their staffs. They enacted a balanced-budget amendment. They promoted the line-item veto for the president to curb pork-barrel spending.
But in the pride of their victory, they let those principles slip away, and they became the epitome of the excesses they were elected to oppose.
In the minority, the GOP had been vigilant about what people wanted and how they were being perceived. They knew their weaknesses as well as their strengths, and played a careful game.
But in the thrill of power, they forgot their weaknesses — and soon forgot their strengths, too.
In the years leading up to their victory, the GOP crafted clever ideas to better spend the nation’s welfare dollars, better structure the tax code to increase savings and investment, and even tried to address systemic problems in entitlements.
But once ensconced in Washington offices, their new ideas were all about new pork-barrel spending projects.
Today we have new leaders in Washington, and they are certainly proud of their accomplishments.
The election of Barack Obama was historic — but it was historic as a beginning, not as an end in itself. His supporters don’t seem to notice. The celebrations seem to take it for granted that Obama will be successful, that he will turn the economy around, that he will bring peace to our times.
Don’t count on it. What’s most likely to happen is what has happened so often before.
When John F. Kennedy won, there was a similar euphoria in the air — but the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion sucked away all the excitement that lingered after Inauguration Day. And the same people who cheered Kennedy at the start of his presidency were not long after protesting the Vietnam War he launched.
When Bill Clinton was inaugurated, The Washington Post’s headline read: “A New Era.” But the new era didn’t last very long as Clinton’s fledgling administration entered a bruising battle over homosexuals in the military. Two years later, the GOP would sweep Congress.
It all reminds one of the premature “Mission Accomplished” sign on the aircraft carrier that George W. Bush visited.
What of Barack Obama? His victory celebrations began over the summer when he created his own presidential seal and held rock-concert-like appearances in Europe. He appeared in a temple at his convention. The euphoria reached near pathological intensity after his election.
What cometh after pride this time?
Washington’s new elite will surely push pro-abortion principles, hard. Let’s push back, even harder, and wait for them to let up.
The echo chamber of a Washington in which one party holds Congress and the White House will make it easy for anti-family forces to let their guard down. Let’s not let ours down.
And when the imagination of the Washington elite turns to self-aggrandizement, as it always does, let’s think of new ways to promote life.
In the battle ahead, those who stay humble and hungry just might have a chance.
Have to agree with this 100%. I think the designer clothes everyone wears are part of the bubble as well. $1200 and up handbags. I write this wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt, although I do buy them on sale.
My father claimed they had one pair of shoes and shared them among 3 brothers. He might have meant dressy shoes to go out in.
I've never quite understood this one.
Wasn't the aircraft carrier returning from a successfully completed mission? What was wrong with recognizing that?
Pride may well precede a fall....but stupidity assures it will be fatal.
But with pride comes complacency, and complacency and imagination are a volatile brew. Our best business minds still found great new opportunities and new streams of revenue — but this time it was about maximizing and displaying wealth instead of building industries and creating opportunities.
Most of this article is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. These lines come closest to identifying the root of the current economic crisis.
Prosperity comes from productivity. To increase prosperity (in any form), it is necessary to increase productivity. Energy is the key to increasing productivity. From the beginning of time, real productivity increases resulted from harnessing one or more forms of energy, from the first cooking fire to the latest microchip. The developed nations bought into the idea that it was necessary to limit energy consumption and created impediments to the plentiful supply of energy. In so doing, they artificially limited increases in productivity and put a cap on prosperity. The smart and the greedy continued to chase wealth, however it became a paper chase leveraged on risk. The perceptible rewards to some increased as a result of that risk, but absent true increases in prosperity (via productivity), the chase was doomed to be fatal to the economy as a whole.
Talk about saving and investing all you want, but the current world economic crisis will not be solved until the powers that be recognize the true role of energy in the pursuit of prosperity. To achieve prosperity, energy must be cheap, plentiful and readily available. This does not preclude an environmentally friendly approach to energy production, but any talk of limiting the amount of energy available, actually reducing the amount consumed, or only being produced by costly methods dooms the world to a continued economic malaise.
Cheap abundant energy is the cure for our economic woes, not bailouts.
One of my Mom’s favorite sayings.
Pride is before destruction, haughty spirit before fall. And i before e except after c.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:’
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:’
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.’
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?’
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’
So you paid Ralph Lauren a discounted price to advertise their product. Made in China? or Malaysia?
I really resent the Mission Accomplished” sign being put in this article. The sign wa made by the men on the carrier whose mission WAS accomplished, as they were coming home. The Bush Administration didn’t put up that sign.
If ever there was a humble man as president, it is George W. Bush, who hasn’t claimed credit for most of his accomplishments, always deferring to the military, the Congress, the volunteers, the men and women of the CIA or State, etc.
I am not pleased to see someone call him prideful.
I do, however, think it will bite the democrats as is predicted in this article.
“It all reminds one of the premature “Mission Accomplished” sign on the aircraft carrier that George W. Bush visited”
I’ve never quite understood this one.
Wasn’t the aircraft carrier returning from a successfully completed mission? What was wrong with recognizing that?
The Left hates it when we win.
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