Living In The Past: The World War II Hangover

“This watch I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the First World War.  It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee.” – Pulp Fiction

 

Every group has a story that defines them:  the myth, the memory, the moment that crystallizes who they are and what they value.  For Christians, it’s the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the ultimate sacrifice and triumph of life.  For the Chinese, it’s the Century of Humiliation, a wound that fuels their drive for global dominance.  For Three Stooges® fans, it’s the seismic shift when Shemp replaced Curly, forever splitting the purists from the heretics, and don’t even get me started on the anti-Curly, Joe Besser.

But for too many groups the Second World War is the foundational story, a crucible that forged their modern identities. And for most, it’s a scar that still festers, shaping their worldview in ways that are often more curse than blessing like the time I found a genie but didn’t get a wish because I rubbed him the wrong way.

Let’s start with the United States.

For the United States, WWII cemented the idea that big government is the ultimate and best problem-solver and has our best interests at heart.  The war effort, which would have cost $4.1 trillion in today’s dollars, mobilized industry, science, and bureaucracy like never before, birthing the military-industrial complex that Ike warned us about.  I hear JFK was going to work on that, but they changed his mind.

The lesson of the war was simple:  if you throw enough tax dollars and central planning at a problem, you can save the world.  Never mind that the failed New Deal had already disproved this; WWII made it gospel.  Blacks can’t read?  Throw money and central planning at it.  Poor people keep doing the things that made them poor?  Throw money and central planning at it.  Women complaining about . . . whatever?  Throw money and central planning at it.  The result of all this was the United States giving DEI grants for difficult tasks, like breathing.

The war also taught Americans that war is noble when the British say so.  Pearl Harbor was the trigger for the entry of the United States, but Britain’s pleas for aid via Lend-Lease pulled us into Europe’s mess for the second time in a generation.  Post-1945, the U.S. embraced its role as the world’s foremost military power and world policeman, from Korea to Kabul, with a budget to match, spending trillions to give democracy to those that don’t care about it.

Another lingering ghost: the myth of the “Greatest Generation,” implying every war since is just as righteous, no matter the cost in blood or treasure.  This is the same generation that voted in all of Johnson’s Great Society crap, and the generation you can thank for the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965.  Our victory in World War II blinds us to overreach, ballooning debt, and the erosion of liberty at home as the state grows ever fatter.

RTWT @ Wilder Wealthy and Wise