Mark Steyn, from remarks delivered at a lecture at Hillsdale College, March of this year:
[…] the last holdout, the United States, is embarking on the same grim path: After the President unveiled his budget, I heard Americans complain, oh, it’s another Jimmy Carter, or LBJ’s Great Society, or the new New Deal. You should be so lucky. Those nickel-and-dime comparisons barely begin to encompass the wholesale Europeanization that’s underway. The 44th president’s multi-trillion-dollar budget, the first of many, adds more to the national debt than all the previous 43 presidents combined, from George Washington to George Dubya. The President wants Europeanized health care, Europeanized daycare, Europeanized education, and, as the Europeans have discovered, even with Europeanized tax rates you can’t make that math add up. In Sweden, state spending accounts for 54% of GDP. In America, it was 34%—ten years ago. Today, it’s about 40%. In four years’ time, that number will be trending very Swede-like.
But forget the money, the deficit, the debt, the big numbers with the 12 zeroes on the end of them. So-called fiscal conservatives often miss the point. The problem isn’t the cost. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They’re wrong because they deform the relationship between the citizen and the state. Even if there were no financial consequences, the moral and even spiritual consequences would still be fatal. That’s the stage where Europe is.
America is just beginning this process.
[…]
California is increasingly a government that has a state. And it is still in the early stages of the process. California has thirtysomething million people. The Province of Quebec has seven million people. Yet California and Quebec have roughly the same number of government workers. “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” said Adam Smith, and America still has a long way to go. But it’s better to jump off the train as you’re leaving the station and it’s still picking up speed than when it’s roaring down the track and you realize you’ve got a one-way ticket on the Oblivion Express.
If you’re a business, when government gives you 2% of your income, it has a veto on 100% of what you do. If you’re an individual, the impact is even starker. Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. That’s the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door to door in Britain and conducting a “health audit” of the contents of your refrigerator. They’re not yet confiscating your Twinkies; they just want to take a census of how many you have. So you do all this for the “free” health care—and in the end you may not get the “free” health care anyway. Under Britain’s National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it’s appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of “lifestyle choices.” Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his “lifestyle choices” get a pass while theirs don’t. But that’s the point: Tyranny is always whimsical.
And if they can’t get you on grounds of your personal health, they’ll do it on grounds of planetary health. Not so long ago in Britain it was proposed that each citizen should have a government-approved travel allowance. If you take one flight a year, you’ll pay just the standard amount of tax on the journey. But, if you travel more frequently, if you take a second or third flight, you’ll be subject to additional levies—in the interest of saving the planet for Al Gore’s polar bear documentaries and that carbon-offset palace he lives in in Tennessee.
Isn’t this the very definition of totalitarianism-lite? The Soviets restricted the movement of people through the bureaucratic apparatus of “exit visas.” The British are proposing to do it through the bureaucratic apparatus of exit taxes—indeed, the bluntest form of regressive taxation. As with the Communists, the nomenklatura—the Prince of Wales, Al Gore, Madonna—will still be able to jet about hither and yon. What’s a 20% surcharge to them? Especially as those for whom vast amounts of air travel are deemed essential—government officials, heads of NGOs, environmental activists—will no doubt be exempted from having to pay the extra amount. But the ghastly masses will have to stay home.
“Freedom of movement” used to be regarded as a bedrock freedom. The movement is still free, but there’s now a government processing fee of $389.95. And the interesting thing about this proposal was that it came not from the Labour Party but the Conservative Party.
That’s Stage Two of societal enervation—when the state as guarantor of all your basic needs becomes increasingly comfortable with regulating your behavior. Free peoples who were once willing to give their lives for liberty can be persuaded very quickly to relinquish their liberties for a quiet life. […]
The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government “security,” large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time—the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff. It’s ridiculous for grown men and women to say: I want to be able to choose from hundreds of cereals at the supermarket, thousands of movies from Netflix, millions of songs to play on my iPod—but I want the government to choose for me when it comes to my health care. A nation that demands the government take care of all the grown-up stuff is a nation turning into the world’s wrinkliest adolescent, free only to choose its record collection.
And don’t be too sure you’ll get to choose your record collection in the end. That’s Stage Three: When the populace has agreed to become wards of the state, it’s a mere difference of degree to start regulating their thoughts. When my anglophone friends in the Province of Quebec used to complain about the lack of English signs in Quebec hospitals, my response was that, if you allow the government to be the sole provider of health care, why be surprised that they’re allowed to decide the language they’ll give it in? But, as I’ve learned during my year in the hellhole of Canadian “human rights” law, that’s true in a broader sense. In the interests of “cultural protection,” the Canadian state keeps foreign newspaper owners, foreign TV operators, and foreign bookstore owners out of Canada. Why shouldn’t it, in return, assume the right to police the ideas disseminated through those newspapers, bookstores and TV networks it graciously agrees to permit?
[…] The big problem for those of us arguing for classical liberalism is that in modern Canada there’s hardly anything left that isn’t on the state dripfeed to one degree or another: Too many of the institutions healthy societies traditionally look to as outposts of independent thought—churches, private schools, literature, the arts, the media—either have an ambiguous relationship with government or are downright dependent on it. Up north, “intellectual freedom” means the relevant film-funding agency—Cinedole Canada or whatever it’s called—gives you a check to enable you to continue making so-called “bold, brave, transgressive” films that discombobulate state power not a whit.
And then comes Stage Four, in which dissenting ideas and even words are labeled as “hatred.” In effect, the language itself becomes a means of control. Despite the smiley-face banalities, the tyranny becomes more naked: In Britain, a land with rampant property crime, undercover constables nevertheless find time to dine at curry restaurants on Friday nights to monitor adjoining tables lest someone in private conversation should make a racist remark. An author interviewed on BBC Radio expressed, very mildly and politely, some concerns about gay adoption and was investigated by Scotland Yard’s Community Safety Unit for Homophobic, Racist and Domestic Incidents. A Daily Telegraph columnist is arrested and detained in a jail cell over a joke in a speech. A Dutch legislator is invited to speak at the Palace of Westminster by a member of the House of Lords, but is banned by the government, arrested on arrival at Heathrow and deported.
America, Britain, and even Canada are not peripheral nations: They’re the three anglophone members of the G7. They’re three of a handful of countries that were on the right side of all the great conflicts of the last century. But individual liberty flickers dimmer in each of them. The massive expansion of government under the laughable euphemism of “stimulus” (Stage One) comes with a quid pro quo down the line (Stage Two): Once you accept you’re a child in the government nursery, why shouldn’t Nanny tell you what to do? And then—Stage Three—what to think? And—Stage Four—what you’re forbidden to think . . . .
[…]
As Gerald Ford liked to say when trying to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” And that’s true. But there’s an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn’t big enough to get you to give any of it back. That’s the position European governments find themselves in. Their citizens have become hooked on unaffordable levels of social programs which in the end will put those countries out of business. Just to get the Social Security debate in perspective, projected public pension liabilities are expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8% of GDP in the U.S. In Greece, the figure is 25%—i.e., total societal collapse. So what? shrug the voters. Not my problem. I want my benefits. The crisis isn’t the lack of money, but the lack of citizens—in the meaningful sense of that word.
Every Democrat running for election tells you they want to do this or that “for the children.” If America really wanted to do something “for the children,” it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a leviathan of bloated bureaucracy and unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. That’s the real “war on children” (to use another Democrat catchphrase)—and every time you bulk up the budget you make it less and less likely they’ll win it.
Conservatives often talk about “small government,” which, in a sense, is framing the issue in leftist terms: they’re for big government. But small government gives you big freedoms—and big government leaves you with very little freedom. The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion-dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher—and you make it very difficult ever to change back. Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The inertia, the ennui, the fatalism is more pathetic than the demographic decline and fiscal profligacy of the social democratic state, because it’s subtler and less tangible. But once in a while it swims into very sharp focus. Here is the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from an interview with the Belgian paper De Standaard. Mr. van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay “humanist” (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. “I am not a warrior, but who is?” he shrugged. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.” In the famous Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, Mr. van den Boogard is past denial, anger, bargaining and depression, and has arrived at a kind of acceptance.
[…]
About a year ago, there was a picture in the papers of Iranian students demonstrating in Tehran and waving placards. And what they’d written on those placards was: “Live free or die!” They understand the power of those words; so should we.
Powerful stuff — though I’d wager that some in the “conservative” coalition would sniff “privately” that Steyn is engaging a bit of wingnut chumming, riling up the rubes too simplistic and “purist” to understand how the political game is actually played.
So embarrassing!
I look forward to Allah ironizing this on Twitter. You know, to show the right people he’s not one of those.
Self-hating conservatism is the new black. Tweet your disaffection. Who knows? Could land you a gig at Reason.
OUTLAW!
(h/t Jonah)
I’ll give you an opinion on this as soon as a publisher ( editor, producer) tells me what it should be.
“Live free or die,” that’s the crux, isn’t it? We rapidly approach the moment when we will be called upon to make that very choice. Until we’re willing to do the latter, we won’t be able to do the former.
As much as I love Mark Steyn, lectures like these make me hate, hate, hate him.
Because he’s right. He’s exactly, precisely, excruciatingly right. We are battling not just 40 years of leftist indoctrination and an over-reaching government but primarily the unfortunate human propensity to choose a quiet life over a dynamic one.
They’d rather languish in a zoo — where the keepers feed you and examine your teeth periodically — than live free and wild and in danger. Someone just asked Rush when the populace will hit critical mass and start fighting back but hard. He doesn’t know.
I know that Jeff and Mark and other fear that it won’t ever happen; I’m often in that crowd.
But something is different here: Obama is making the changes almost overnight, whereas the creep in Europe has been happening since the end of WWII. And the Euros didn’t have themselves as an example of What Happens Farther Down This Road. They are also the beneficiaries of our defense budget and our vibrant innovation culture, especially with regard to healthcare.
They’ve been having it both ways. And those who didn’t like the sclerotic welfare state could always emigrate to the U.S. The way our ancestors did.
But if we lose our innovation, our defense systems, our productivity, and our relatively low energy prices — and we will lose them fairly suddenly — it will hurt.
That may be our only salvation.
That and the Montana challenge to federal gun laws. The Euros don’t have a constitution that provides states with the means to be a counterbalance to the fed.
And they don’t have an armed populace.
There is hope. It’s just hard to discern it through the disbelief at seeing where and how fast this particular train is headed.
The train HAD to speed up, dicentra. That way, the ride gets a lot bumpier, thereby waking up more of the passengers. In a darkly ironic way, you could make the case that it’s actually a good thing.
Which is why many of us agonized so much over the decision to vote for McCain.
I can salve my conscience for having done so only because of Palin, but it was still a tormenting decision.
Steyn is just so embarrassingly honest. Which, I’m told, is definitely not the new black.
The Allahpundit one is embarrassing to read anymore. He’s a lot that dorky prissy gawky kid on the student council what everyday wears one of the 39 different colored Izod sports shirts what he owns and too-tight jeans and prances around behind all the other somewhat less dorky prissy kids on the student council rolling his eyes and audibly sighing cause of they are doing it wrong.
To illustrate what happens with government involvement in everything, my wife was involved in a local mental health group. The almost totality of the discussion and focus was on getting government funding for a position or program. Nothing or next to nothing about organizing some way to help, or whatever. All about sucking on the teat of the state.
And of course if you are involved with the medical/legal situations where someone is mentally ill and unable to care for themselves, all decisions are made by people who don’t care.
Ugly and mean. But it’s the best country/medical system in the world. I’m told that by politicians all the time.
Derek
What’s going to be really interesting, provided anyone’s still around to notice, is what will happen in Europe and Japan.
The U.S. economy has been carrying the Europeans for at least the last half-century — not just in the obvious ways, like we spend for defense so they don’t have to, but in trade imbalances (some of them not easily accounted for, like us requiring the drug and aerospace companies to finance research out of their own pockets) and providing a credible reserve currency. I had a Frenchman rejoice over the election of Sarkozy, on the ground that now the French could get back to what they do best: fucking Americans.
Note to the French, and other Europeans: that’s over. No socialist regime has ever succeeded without an outside subsidy; the fact that the subsidy to Europe isn’t readily visible doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and it does. So when “the Americans will pay, as usual” (quote from Tom Clancy) goes away, what price European “safety net”?
Regards,
Ric
You say that like it’s a bad thing, Ric.
That was one of the best damn essays outside of this blog I have read, in that it encapsulated the things I would like to have said. I wonder what the students at Hillsdale College made of it?
oh. But for the record I vote live free.
A shame to see all these people, as ignorant of their liberties as fish are ignorant of water, gratefully accepting the manacles to stop their hands from trembling.
I got this in the mail a few days ago, and I’ve been reading it over and over since then. I want to comment on it, but I can’t seem to add a single word that would improve upon the essay itself.
Jeffersonian: A simple “just damn” usually suffices when I’m in your situation.
I want to comment on it, but I can’t seem to add a single word that would improve upon the essay itself.
Then it’s genuine Steyn, not an impersonator.
The Allahpundit one is embarrassing to read anymore.
He mentioned being a shut-in once. Was that literal or was he just being a self-deprecating beta male?
Excellent suggestion, Pat.
“Damn.”
#7
Happyfeet, if Harry Reid ever asks, you’ve got a gift.
Just one of many serious dangers that comes in trail of a collapse of order such as we are about to see is the great scope for mischief granted — willy-nilly — to external enemies, and those, we’ve got ’em aplenty. The dying may be on a scale never before imagined.
Plus the fact that Europeans have always toyed with the Totalitarian Temptation, while the U.S., not so much.
Toyed with it, dicentra? We’re periodically infatuated with it!
dicentra:
Someone once said that the dark night of fascism was forever descending on America, but it only ever touched ground in Europe. I hate to think that that may be changing.
Mark Steyn is on it as usual:
The Dead Kennedys were prophets on this issue.
When the revolution comes, I will embark on a pilgrimage to the great citadel in the Rockies, where I will sit with Master Goldstein and Master Steyn and learn how to turn words into power.
“If they impose socialist medicine on us, where are the Canadians going to go?”
-someone
Anyone up for an anecdote?
In the fall of ’04, I ponied up the coin for one of NR’s fundraiser meet-n-greets which was held at Kate O’Beirne’s house in the DC area. Most, if not all, the crew were there except Steyn, much to my disappointment. Anyway, after mingling and making conversation with most of them and asking them about Steyn, it was surprising to me that at that time, virtually no one had actually met him face to face except David Frum (a fellow Cannuck.) Rich Lowry had only met him once. I’m sure that has changed by now as I see he’s been featured on their cruise advertisements.
My sublte takeaway from these conversations was that Steyn’s writings made them–writers, every one of them–feel a little inadequate.
Sallust, friend of Julius Caesar, observed: “Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.†Just so.
David Frum is a Canuck?
Well…that explains some things.
America has always only ever been an experiment away from the course of human history. To find out, as the experiment draws to an end, that Men are, after all, ever the same, isn’t much of a surprise.
To find out, as the experiment draws to an end,
Hey. There’s pessimism, there’s despair, and there’s lighting the funeral pyre while the victim is still touring the country in an old RV with lawn chairs lashed to the back.
We’ll have none of the latter, hear?
The road to serfdom is paved with good intentions…
“Obama is making the changes almost overnight”
One thing working in our favor is the debt markets…because of poor participation at the Treasury auctions, they’ve had to raise rates DURING the auctions. This means the funding available to Obama may dry/slow up, and he will have to try to push ahead with a large, naked tax grab.
Hey…We’ll have none of the latter, hear?
Heh, heh, heh.
Yes. He was our gift to you.
Oh Canada
Our cold and unhealthy land!
True medical care, we find in southern lands.
With supplemental insurance we seek our care,
The True North doesnt have colonscopies!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we get our medical care south of thee.
God keep the USA health system the way it be!
O Canada, we get our care south of thee.
O Canada, we get our care south of thee.
Canadians make really good pancakes except a lot of times they call them “flapjacks” even when it says pancake mix right there on the box. Canadians.
There’s a great old Cox & Forkum cartoon on Canadian Health Care. I’ll send it to Jeff.
happy – we call ’em Beaver Tails.
yum?
Pancakes are better with bacon. Lots of bacon. Now I am hungry. Damn.
I like the Canada pavilion at Epcot. It is like Canada, only warmer.
Canadians and bacon are like fat kids and cake except there’s no such thing as fat kid cake.
We invented basketball.
See I didn’t know that.
Now you do.
We invented basketball.
You say that like it is a good thing.
i liked the botox face liar’s preformance today
i think that was one of the best essays i ever read, at least on the net.
im going to send it on, and around.
#9 Ric
I’ve had this very same thought but couldn’t express it so well. The Nation Below Canada has been the locomotive pulling the train for some time now, and the dummy locomotives and freight cars have had a right old time of it for years. But when the last remaining motive power stops, what then? StagNation, the new world community.
#3 dicentra
You, sir, need your own blog. Or at least you should be able to post like Dan and Darleen. Reading Steyn’s address left me either furious or defeated. I can’t tell which any longer.
dicentra posts in the pub a lot Mr. Orwell and yes she is very frontpage-worthy I think … she did a huge Alinsky thing not long ago that is especially worth your time and also global warming… you can just click on her name in the column to the left
#48
Thank you… I will definitely check out the Pub for the Alinsky thing. Geraghty’s post at NRO on Alinsky and Barry O is interesting as well.
But what is Perez Hilton’s position on this?
But what is Perez Hilton’s position on this?
must resist ….
But what is Perez Hilton’s position on this?
Uh. Just damn.
And Mr. Steyn… wow.
Obama-care, for when three trimesters just isn’t enough.
?
“But what is Perez Hilton’s position on this?”
I believe [s]he slips in between Andrew Sullivan and Barney Frank. Sometimes, vice versa, depending. But not very much.
For the record, I love going to Canada to visit, I just don’t want to live there.
It’s the weather. I’m a fragile Southerner. Michigan weather is pushing it as it is. (On the reverse side, I laugh at 90 degree heat w/ 100% humidity. Laugh, then fan myself while drinking sweet tea)
That was the late Jean Jacques Revel.
More like live free or bitch a lot, and do nothing.
Mmmm, good. They love that free corn, especially when handed out by a calm, cool, black man who makes their leg tingle. Hard to believe that after Reagan laid it out in his “A Time for Choosing” in 1964 that the nation he loved would choose oblivion. Or maybe Obama only wants “To Serve Mankind” like in the Twilight Zone?
And that quote right there is why we all love happyfeet. In a platonic way of course.
Nuance
More like live free or bitch a lot, and do nothing.
Ayup.
[…] Ric Locke points out (in comments on Jeff’s post, h/t BTW) that we (Stage One, America) might see the fall of the European socialist model, before we too go over the cliff… […]
Classic Steyn! Loved it.
He wrote:
This ‘graph invokes my “Campus Thesis.” Campuses (or “Arenas” if you like) fall into two categories: Voluntary and Involuntary. Outlaws, Libertarians and Freemen don’t mind voluntary campusing, such as volunteerism, informed consumerism (or branding), and private, interpersonal contracts, because we are voluntary, diligent partners in those campuses’ designs.
We abhor invountary campuses, though. We submit grudgingly only to a few: the ones we resign ourselves to are “Nation” (or its Helenic icon “Republic”) and its codicil of obligations, family, truancy laws, and so long as it does not constrain good men and women from pursuing their benign, private affairs, society’s aggregate, peer-mediated constraints.
Which brings me to my point: the global Left’s (and Obama’s) MO is to proliferate involuntary campuses to include people trapped in hospital rooms, daycare centers, workplaces and even airports*. This amounts to the ever-growing compulsory induction of the once-free citizenry. In Quebec, so too, in America, one-by-one, the once-fierce ex-European citizens are being shanghai’d to trim sails and roll rope on E.U.-flagged pirate ships.
It’s this being inducted into confining postmodern campuses against our wills – by needs using the state’s coercive force agency combined with the media’s “arrogation” technique – that Free Americans cannot, and ultimately will not, abide.
The Americans I know don’t take a halter very well. We want to do more than just choose the Musak on the packed train to the
incineratorsbelching factory.-Steve
* Ever notice how, like any predator, these guys target the weak and the non-ambulatory in the herd? “Gay Marriage!?” They circle the herd looking for weaknesses, then they sift, sort and pounce.
Gulp…big typo!
I shoulda wrote: “…so long as they do not constrain good men and women from pursuing their benign, private affairs, society’s aggregate, peer-mediated constraints.
verb conjugation error: corrected. (dicentra may be watching!!) :-)
I hope one day everyone knows the intention of what General John Stark was saying. I’m less optimistic about the actual prospects of that occurring.
Steyn laid it all out, this script has been written and played out, we all know the ending, required self immolation…
#2, I’ve said for years that the only rights you have are the ones you will kill for. Dying just produces a rotting corpse. Killing forces people to make the choice. Is it really worth my individual life to choose what this person watches, eats, drinks, etc.? That’s why the answer to things like the proposal to use “localism” boards to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine is to make serving on one as hazardous as a tour on the Russian Front.
Not up for the actual killing? Make sure you serve on the jury. No one knows how you got to “reasonable doubt.”
“Comment by geoffb on 5/14 @ 6:24 pm #
Obama-care, for when three trimesters just isn’t enough.”
Damn; that is going to leave a mark
Sorry, this may be a bit long, but Kipling seemed to have a good handle on these things:
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
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 neighbour 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 burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!