Why are we so willing to repeat history's mistakes?

In the August 20, 2010 Salon editorial "
Why are we so willing to repeat history's mistakes?," David Sirota suggests that the pursuit of money and devotion to ideology cause people to overlook important lessons from history:

Out of all the famous quotations, few better describe this eerily familiar time than those attributed to George Santayana and Yogi Berra. The former, a philosopher, warned that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The latter, a baseball player, stumbled into prophecy by declaring, "It's déjà vu all over again."

As movies give us bad remakes of already bad productions (hello, "Predators"), television resuscitates ancient clowns (howdy, Dee Snider) and music revives pure schlock (I'm looking at you, Devo), we are now surrounded by the obvious mistakes of yesteryear. And it might be funny -- it might be downright hilarious -- if only this cycle didn't infect the deadly serious stuff.

Vietnam showed us the perils of occupation, then the Iraq war showed us the same thing -- and yet now, we are somehow doing it all over again in Afghanistan. The Great Depression underscored the downsides of laissez-faire economics, the Great Recession highlighted the same danger -- and yet the new financial "reform" bill leaves that laissez-faire attitude largely intact. Ronald Reagan proved the failure of trickle-down tax cuts to spread prosperity before George W. Bush proved the same thing -- and yet now, in a recession, Congress is considering more tax cuts all over again.

These are but a few examples of mistakes being repeated ad infinitum. In a Yogi Berra country, the jarring lessons of history are remembered as mere flickers of déjà vu -- if they are remembered at all. Most often, we forget completely, seeing in George Santayana's refrain not a dark warning, but a cheery celebration. And the logical question is: Why? Why have we become so dismissive of history's lessons and therefore so willing to repeat history's mistakes?

Some of it is the modern information miasma. Though the Internet makes eons of history instantly available, the 24-7, moment-to-moment typhoon of cable screamfests, blogs, tweets, e-mail alerts and "breaking news" graphics makes last week's news feel old, and last month's news feel positively paleolithic. Add to this reportage that is increasingly presented with zero context, and it's clear that journalism is sowing mass senility.

Politicians also make significant contributions to the problem. With the age of the permanent campaign intensifying and the era of the long-term electoral majority ending, both parties deliberately focus only on the very recent past -- and obscure the larger historical record. From the national debt to poverty to the downsides of American empire, Republicans tell us it's all the fault of Democrats' two-year-old reign, while Democrats blame it on Bush's eight-year presidency. This, even though these emergencies developed over decades.

And then, of course, there is ideology.

With the present so radically departing from our past, history has become a damning package of inconvenient truths -- and those truths are often shunned because they threaten today's most powerful ideological interests.

This is why in the debates over war, economics and taxes, we aren't urged to consider past conflicts; we aren't encouraged to remember that America experienced its most storied growth under the New Deal's aggressive financial regulation; and we aren't told that wages and job growth expanded in the mid-20th century with a top income tax bracket above 70 percent. We aren't reminded of these facts because they threaten the defense industry, Wall Street and high-income taxpayers, respectively -- and those forces exert enormous influence over our political discourse, whether through media sponsorship, political campaign contributions or lobbying.

No matter the issue, this axiom is the same: When money has a vested interest in burying history, history is inevitably buried, ultimately leading us from Santayana and Berra's aphorisms to Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same things over and over again and somehow expecting different results.

Ronald Reagan speaks out against Socialized Medicine - Audio

Ronald Reagan speaks out against Socialized Medicine, circa 1961. Audio file.

For more information, visit The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library.

Looking for someone to blame for U.S. dependence on foreign oil? How about Ronald Reagan?

"Had Reagan left those CAFE standards in place, and the US had continued to conserve oil at the same rate as it had from 1979-85, the US today would be importing not a single drop of oil from the Persian Gulf." - Paul Abrams in his September 3, 2008 article "There is a 'Villain' In Our Dependence on Foreign Oil and His Name is Ronald Reagan." The article says:

Republicans in Minnesota have become born-again alternative-energy zealots, not to save the planet from global warming (their VP candidate does not believe that man's activities contribute to the problem), but for another laudable goal, eliminating our dependence on foreign sources of energy. At least they get that part of it.

At the same time, in nearly every other phrase, the Republicans will praise Ronald Reagan in worshipful terms. They will attempt to be courteous to the 2 George Bushes, but will immediately cover themselves by referencing Reagan. Indeed, as soon as George W finished his speech yesterday praising John McCain, the convention cut to a picture of Reagan. God is alive and well in St. Paul.

Yet, if there were a single major villain responsible for our dependence on foreign oil it is Ronald Reagan himself.

During the rise in the oil prices following the Iranian revolution, President Jimmy Carter announced policies that would prevent the US from ever importing a single drop of oil more per year than in 1979. The program included subsidies for alternative energies and serial increases in the efficiency (C.A.F.E. = corporate average fuel economy) standards for automobiles

Carter called it, presciently, "the moral equivalent of war". Anyone today doubting Carter's insight? Any takers at the Republican National Convention?

Regrettably, a Republican PR operation realized that the acronym spelled out "m.e.o.w", and they pounced on the program using "meow" to ridicule it. Ronald Reagan then convinced the American people that conservation was beneath them, and he not only cut the subsidies, he also phased out the CAFE standards.

It may bear repeating the obvious: every gallon of oil saved by efficiency is a gift that keeps on giving, year-after-year another gallon is not burned. By contrast every gallon produced is used once, and is then gone forever. Of course, oil companies do not make money when you do not burn that gallon every year.

And, now, the tragic truth: had Reagan left those CAFE standards in place, and the US had continued to conserve oil at the same rate as it had from 1979-85, the US today would be importing not a single drop of oil from the Persian Gulf. Not one. Zilch. Zorch. Nada. (See, e.g., Amory Lovins, "Energy Security Facts", Rocky Mountain Institute).

Imagine what benefits there would have been had Reagan not used the Iranian situation for partisan political gain. Start with Detroit. Instead of being far behind the efficiency curve, and losing out to foreign competitors (from countries where the price of gasoline was higher, and thus were producing higher efficiency engines), US automakers would be healthy, and right in the thick of it. Employment levels would be up in Michigan, and high wage jobs would be growing not shrinking. Add to that US ingenuity, and we may well have been the leaders in the world in fuel-efficient and/or alternative energy using automobiles.

Jump now to our foreign debt. Instead of being beholden to close allies like China to hold (and not demand payment) of our debt, our balance of payments would be, if not positive, at least not nearly so negative. The dollar would be higher, as countries would have more confidence in the greenback's value.

Consider our foreign policy. We would no longer be at the mercy of rogue nations, and those countries would not have the resources to support their terrorist activities and their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. To be sure, North Korea and Pakistan, and even Israel, have shown that even poor nations can develop nuclear weapons, but North Korea has done so in part because they believe there is a potential market for their technology among the oil-producing states and Pakistan was likely funded by Libya and other oil-producers. Israel was aided by France. Without dealing in absolutes, we can confidently assert that the world would have been a far less dangerous place.

Consider health. Our air would be cleaner. Asthma rates in children have doubled almost every decade, and asthmatic attacks have become a major cause of absences among schoolchildren. Large populations of young children chronically inhale steroids to prevent such asthmatic attacks.

Oh yes, what about the small matter of global warming? Let us just say that our challenges in preventing future catastrophe would be far less daunting. To warm the cockles of Republicans' hearts, Al Gore may never have won the Nobel Prize.

Ronald Reagan does not deserve all the blame. Having outflanked the Democrats politically on both energy and tax policy, the progressive impulse among the opposition vanished with Reagan's landslide victory in 1984. Bush, always trying to ape Reagan to outdo his father, managed to cancel the remaining tax-credits for purchasing hybrid cars, weakened efficiency standards for nearly everything, provided enormous tax breaks for Hummers and other gas-guzzlers.

Outside the Republican convention, however, that victory rings very hollow 25 years, two World Trade Center towers and two Persian Gulf Wars later.

The next time you fork out $50 to fill your tank with gas, or send your son or daughter off to Iraq, thank Ronald Reagan (with a tip of the hat to George W Bush).

A similar account of this story occurs on pages 14-16 of Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

Burdening Future Generations

An editorial cartoon by Gary Varvel appeared on the Jacksonville Observer website on June 19, 2009. It depicts future taxpayers being burdened by a big government. I agree with the cartoon with a few modifications. The big government ship also should include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started by President George W. Bush, the fiscally irresponsible but popular prescription drug benefit pushed through by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2003, and the thousands of other government programs. And instead of just Barack Obama on the ship's bow, it also should include Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and most of the other politicians in Washington since 1981. That is when our culture of fiscal irresponsibility was established under the disguise of supply-side economic theory. See the "U.S. Public Debt Since 1940 - Adjusted for Inflation." Baby Boomers have been burdening future generations for decades.

Reagan wouldn't recognize this GOP

In a January 24, 2009 editorial in the Los Angeles Times, former Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards argues:

In my mind's eye, I can see Ronald Reagan, wearing wings and a Stetson, perched on a cloud and watching all the goings-on down here in his old earthly home. Laughing, rolling his eyes and whacking his forehead over the absurdities he sees, he's watching his old political party as it twists itself into ever more complex knots, punctuated only by pauses to invoke the Gipper's name. It's been said that God would be amazed by what his followers ascribe to him; believe me, Reagan would be similarly amazed by what his most fervent admirers cite in their desire to be seen as true-blue Reaganites.

On the premise that simple is best, many Republicans have reduced their operating philosophy to two essentials: First, government is bad (it's "the problem"); second, big government is the worst and small government is better (although because government itself is bad, it may be assumed that small government is only marginally preferable). This is all errant nonsense. It is wrong in every conceivable way and violative of the Constitution, American exceptionalism, freedom, conservatism, Reaganism and common sense.

In America, government is ... us. What is "exceptional" about America is the depth of its commitment to the principle of self-government; we elect the government, we replace it or its members when they displease us, and by our threats or support, we help steer what government does.

A shocker: The Constitution, which we love for the limits it places on government power, not only constrains government, it empowers it. Limited government is not no government. And limited government is not "small" government. Simply building roads, maintaining a military, operating courts, delivering the mail and doing other things specifically mandated by the Constitution for America's 300 million people make it impossible to keep government "small." It is boundaries that protect freedom. Small governments can be oppressive, and large ones can diminish freedoms. It is the boundaries, not the numbers, that matter.

What would Reagan think of this? Wasn't it he who warned that government is the problem? Well, permit me. I directed the joint House-Senate policy advisory committees for the Reagan presidential campaign. I was part of his congressional steering committee. I sat with him in his hotel room in Manchester, N.H., the night he won that state's all-important primary. I knew him before he was governor of California and before I was a member of Congress. Let me introduce you to Ronald Reagan.

Reagan, who spent 16 years in government, actually said this:

"In the present crisis," referring specifically to the high taxes and high levels of federal spending that had marked the Carter administration, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He then went on to say: "Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work." Government, he said, "must provide opportunity." He was not rejecting government, he was calling -- as Barack Obama did Tuesday -- for better management of government, for wiser decisions.

This is the difference between ideological advocacy and holding public office: Having accepted partial responsibility for the nation's well-being, one assumes an obligation that goes beyond bumper-sticker slogans. Certitude is the enemy of wisdom, and in office, it is wisdom, not certitude, that is required.

How, for example, should conservatives react to stimulus and bailout proposals in the face of an economic meltdown? The wall between government and the private sector is an essential feature of our democracy. At the same time, if there is a dominant identifier of conservatism -- political, social, psychological -- it is prudence.

If proposals seem unworkable or unwise (if they do not contain provisions for taxpayers to recoup their investment; if they do not allow for taxpayers, as de facto shareholders, to insist on sound management practices; if they would allow government officials to make production and pricing decisions), conservatives have a responsibility to resist. But they also have an obligation to propose alternative solutions. It is government's job -- Reagan again -- to provide opportunity and foster productivity. With the nation in financial collapse, nothing is more imprudent -- more antithetical to true conservatism -- than to do nothing.

The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party, it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power.

Not too long ago, conservatives were thought of as the locus of creative thought. Conservative think tanks (full disclosure: I was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation) were thought of as cutting-edge, offering conservative solutions to national problems. By the 2008 elections, the very idea of ideas had been rejected. One who listened to Barry Goldwater's speeches in the mid-'60s, or to Reagan's in the '80s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen. Last year's presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism's worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation's public affairs.

American conservatism has always had the problem of being misnamed. It is, at root, the political twin to classical European liberalism, a freedoms-based belief in limiting the power of government to intrude on the liberties of the people. It is the opposite of European conservatism (which Winston Churchill referred to as reverence for king and church); it is rather the heir to John Locke and James Madison, and a belief that the people should be the masters of their government, not the reverse (a concept largely turned on its head by the George W. Bush presidency).

Over the last several years, conservatives have turned themselves inside out: They have come to worship small government and have turned their backs on limited government. They have turned to a politics of exclusion, division and nastiness. Today, they wonder what went wrong, why Americans have turned on them, why they lose, or barely win, even in places such as Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina.

And, watching, I suspect Ronald Reagan is smacking himself on the forehead, rolling his eyes and wondering who in the world these clowns are who want so desperately to wrap themselves in his cloak.

Mickey Edwards is a former U.S. congressman, a lecturer at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and the author of "Reclaiming Conservatism."

...

Ronald Reagan´s Inaugural Address - 1981

In Ronald Reagan´s inaugural address on January 20, 1981, he claims:

For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

Despite these warnings from the beloved Republican leader, the policies pursued in subsequent decades have dramatically increased budget deficits and the public debt.

Charlatans and Cranks

"Fad diets are popular because they promise amazing results with minimal effort. Many people want to lose weight but are not eager to pay the price of eating fewer calories and exercising more regularly. These people are convinced all too easily by the reassuring words of some self-proclaimed expert selling a miraculous product. The want to believe that this new, easy-to-follow diet really will work.

"Fad economics is also popular, for much the same reason. Anyone can adopt the title 'economist' and claim discovery of some easy fix to the economy's troubles. These fads often tempt politicians, who are eager to find easy and novel solutions to hard and persistent problems. Some fads come from charlatans who use crazy theories to gain the limelight and promote their own interests. Others come from cranks who believe that their theories really are true.

"An example of fad economics occurred in 1980, when a small group of economists advised presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that an across-the-board cut in income tax rates would raise tax revenue. They argued that if people could keep a higher fraction of their income, people would work harder to earn more income. Even though tax rates would be lower, income would rise by so much, they claimed, that tax revenue would rise. Almost all professional economists, including most of those who supported Reagan's proposal to cut taxes, viewed this outcome as far too optimistic. Lower tax rates might encourage people to work harder, and this extra effort would offset the direct effects of lower tax rates to some extent. But there was no credible evidence that work effort would rise by enough to cause tax revenues to rise in the face of lower tax rates. George Bush, also a presidential candidate in 1980, agreed with most of the professional economists: He called this idea 'voodoo economics.' Nonetheless, the argument was appealing to Reagan, and it shaped the 1980 presidential campaign and the economic policies of the 1980s.

"People on fad diets put their health at risk but rarely achieve the permanent weight loss they desire. Similarly, when politicians rely on the advice of charlatans and cranks, they rarely get the desirable results they anticipate. After Reagan's election, Congress passed the cut in tax rates that Reagan advocated, but the tax cut did not cause tax revenue to rise. Instead, tax revenue fell, as most economists predicted it would, and the U.S. federal government began a long period of deficit spending, leading to the largest peacetime increase in the government debt in history.

"Fads can make the experts seem less united than they actually are. It would be wrong to conclude that professional nutritionists are in disarray simply because fad diets are so popular. In fact, nutritionists have agreed on the basics of weight loss - exercise and a balanced low-fat diet - for many years. Similarly, when the economics profession appears in disarray, you should ask whether the disagreement is real or manufactured. It may be that some snake-oil salesman is trying to sell a miracle cure for what ails the economy."

-- N. Gregory Mankiw. Principles of Economics. Fort Worth: The Dryden Press, 1997, pp. 29-30.

Mankiw served as the chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005.

Mankiws also has a July 2, 2007 blog entry entitled On Charlatans and Cranks.

Ronald Reagan signed the largest tax increase in U.S. history

According to the April 16, 2004 article by FactCheck.org

Treasury Tax Expert to Bush: Clinton's Increase WASN'T The Biggest.