THE WISDOM OF KIPLING

Our government now owes more money than all of us in the country put together possess.

As of Sep. 30, federal financial statements showed approximately $56.4 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded promises for Medicare and Social Security, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation reported.  The Federal Reserve estimated total household net worth at that time at $56.5 trillion.  

Since then the stock market has crashed, tens of billions of dollars of personal wealth have evaporated, and the government has committed $700 billion to bail out financial institutions.

A government which long has been morally and intellectually bankrupt is now financially bankrupt too.

An example of moral and intellectual bankruptcy is the $1 trillion "stimulus" package the incoming Democrat administration and Democrat-controlled Congress is contemplating to encourage us to continue the behaviors that got us into this mess in the first place.

We’ve been living beyond our means on money borrowed mostly from the Chinese.  Like Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, this had to end at some point, and could only end badly.

The stock market crash has sobered many of us up.  We’re saving as much as we can to guard against the rainy days that appear likely in our future.

But tens of thousands of Americans make their living selling us things we don’t need and can’t afford.  If we live within our means, their jobs are in jeopardy, and the recession could deepen.

The theory behind the stimulus package is that we can spend our way out of the recession.  As former Sen. Fred Thompson put it, this is like telling a fat guy the way to lose weight is to eat more.

The stimulus package Congress passed last Spring didn’t work, and this one probably won’t, either.  But it will delay necessary reforms, and could make the inevitable crash more painful.

We’re like alcoholics who’ve been on a 30-year bender.  We can’t quit cold turkey without a painful period of adjustment.  But if we don’t go through that period of adjustment, we can’t ever get well.  America can’t in the long run be prosperous unless we make things other people want to buy, and finance most of our investments through our own savings.

Democrats will run things for the next four years, so the recession should last at least that long.  That’s because the economic philosophy of the Democratic Party is to subsidize failure and punish success.

Bailing out auto companies that couldn’t make money in good times, and raising taxes on those job creators who are still making money may be good for gathering votes, but not for growing an economy.

I used to infuriate my English teacher in high school by declaring that all anyone needed to know about life could be found in the works of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).  She was not a fan of the bard of the barrack-room.  But the more I see of the world, the more sure I am that this is so.  

My favorite Kipling poem is "The Gods of the Copybook Headings," written in 1919.  Every schoolchild in the US and England back then knew what a "copybook" was:  a handwriting practice book.  Each page was blank save for horizontal rulings, with a different traditional proverb or ancient truth printed in perfect script at the top that the student was to repeatedly copy down the page.

These proverbs or common sense truths – the "copybook headings" – were sneered at by sophisticated intellectuals and fascist government busybodies (Kipling’s "Gods of the Market Place,"  those who deny reality, and claim to control it instead) – just as these same folks sneer at them as "politically incorrect" today.

But reality and common sense always triumph, often brutally, over those who deny them.  Liberalism is based on such denial of reality. Few have ever expressed this better than Kipling, so I thought you’d enjoy this great poem in its entirety.  As you’ll see, it’s just as apt today as almost 90 years ago.

            The Gods of the Copybook Headings

            By Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don’t work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four-
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man-
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:-
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Don’t be surprised if the poem Elizabeth Alexander reads at Mr. Obama’s inauguration expresses the antithesis of this wisdom.  America needs wisdom like Kipling’s more than ever now.  But how much of America wants to hear it?  Which may be why we are where we are now in the first place.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.