My son leaves for work a little after five o'clock in the morning. My eldest child is at work by 7:30 A.M. My youngest is at Mother McAuley for Zero Hour classes at 7 A.M. and the cat is trying to break into the closet in the hall to get at the Charmin and Bounty towels, the little feline bitch.
I'll be at Leo between 5 and 5:30 AM.
My son is an apprentice in a skilled trades union, my eldest is working in-between jobs, and my youngest is preparing to meet the world. Old Dad has been at it for decades.
I went to four o'clock Mass on Saturday with scores of neighbors - cops, foremen, school teachers, retirees and far too many young talented people who have been recently laid off.
America is having some tough times. The President recently said that we are soft, unimaginative, and lost our competitive edge. I respectfully disagree. The President has not watched kids at Kennedy Park, or Catholic League football, nor witnessed the creativity on display at a St. Cajetan's science fair. Likewise, he may do himself some good tagging along with union cement finisher, carpenter, electrician, or do a ride along with cops and firemen in Englewood.
Sometimes it takes an outsider to let us know that we are still in the game. Niall Ferguson gives navel gazers a snap of the wet-towel with his latest piece in Newsweek.
America had proudly reinvented itself before. But this time around, the "reinvention" had wrought a toxic behemoth, one that will likely kill the American economy in our lifetime. The "financial industry" in America is the modern equivalent of American opium traders of yore. Just as the "traders" such as the grandpa of an American president (Delano), plus other American blue-bloods became filthy rich pushing the illicit drug on the China (with the help of gunboats and demands of "free trade"), today's American "finance industry" is designed to serve the same function, backed by unlimited capital, and pushing a low cost, high profit "product" that is designed and guaranteed to ruin the buyers. In the case of opium, within a short couple of generation?s, the illicit drug (banned by the Qing governemen?t but pushed by the Anglo American swashbuckling "smugglers?" backed by gunboats) hollowed out the Chinese economy, dragging it down from No. 1 down to below 100th in the world.
He takes the Blackberry, Apple Mac tropes gets the cold wet and sharp point of towel to the flabby rump with stinging accuracy. Click my post title above for the full whack.
Here are the Killer Apps on the American Device, that will get us back in the game:
Western Civilization's Killer Apps
COMPETITION
Western societies divided into competing factions, leading to progressive improvements.
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology.
THE RULE OF LAW
Representative government based on private-property rights and democratic elections.
MODERN MEDICINE
19th- and 20th-century advances in germ theory, antibiotics, and anesthesia.
THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
Leaps in productivity combined with widespread demand for more, better, and cheaper goods.
THE WORK ETHIC
Combination of intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.
All America needs to do is, as John Kass tells, lay off the Hopium Pipe. Pull it together! Hit the pews; help the neighbors; get the nose out of the belly-button; hit the books; turn off MSNBC, FOX, and CNN and go to a Ward Meeting. Buckle that chin-strap and play until the last whistle.
