FDR’s Time Magazine cover caricature is jaunty. His unmistakable profile, cigarette holder and upturned chin on a white background immediately catches the eye. Beneath the May 26, 1923, cover were Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words: “The way to save is to stop.”
Would that we had inspirational leaders of days gone by in America. Even without great leadership there is something to FDR’s simple postulate that is applicable to every aspect of life in America, indeed the world.
I still have my Central Savings Bank bankbook. I opened the account with my mother as a kid. The stately bank building was made of stone, impregnable, a symbol of reliability and strength. The building remains today on Broadway in New York City. So solid was its construction that although the old Central Savings Bank is no more the iconic building remains.
The bank made me feel that I was important to them. I was introduced to the manager, the bank guard greeted me every time I came to make a deposit. I was supplied with self-addressed-postage paid envelopes with which to mail in my deposits if I didn’t want to go into the bank. My savings grew as did their interest rates from 3½% up to an astronomical 5%. My little work money, birthday and Christmas presents went into my bank account. The money was saved for the future.
U.S. Savings Bonds were another way we saved. It was patriotic to buy bonds. We were investing in America. Interest wasn’t astounding, perhaps 3%, but the face amount of the bond would be paid the holder after ten years. A $50 bond could be cashed in for $100. I never cashed them in. That money was for my education, my future.
There is a widely different ethic between what parents taught children then and now. It really wasn’t FDR’s slogan that brought America out of the Great Depression of the thirties. It was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. War creates plenty of jobs. Unfortunately war creates tragedy.
I went to a carnival at the Florida State Fairgrounds not long ago. There were rides, amusements, food and a freak show of sorts. Gone was the fat woman and tattooed man. With the enlargement of the United States population and its new propensity for skin decoration, they are no longer freaks. Instead there was the curiosity of the smallest woman in the world and the smallest horse on Earth.
Look around. We have become a carnival freak show. Not just in appearance, in gluttony. Abuse of food is one thing; abuse of resources another. The tendency toward greed has all but overcome the perception that capitalism, competition and free enterprise are good things.
With the new gluttony, freedoms are being eroded as quickly as other endangered species. It is human nature to fear the unknown. That is why terrorism is such a powerful weapon in the hands of diabolical. Bombs went off in Northern Ireland killing innocent people. Lebanon became embroiled in a civil war. India saw mass murders in the name of religion. Terrorists invaded American soil. Analogies are being drawn to the Crusades and NATOs involvement in the Arab world. Thus a reasoned appearance of hatred that enables evil to seek revenge on innocents.
To control terrorists we impose controls on ourselves. We have become so reliant on government that we’ve allowed it to swell up like an engorged tick. Now that it is so enormous and that the U.S. economy is so tied to government workers taking salaries and benefits from their jobs, there is pressure on elected representatives not to remove the tick.
We want more. It was masterful. The interplay between Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson in the film Key Largo. “When will you get enough, Rocco?”
“He'll never have enough. He wants more.” The roughly reported dialogue between the hero fisherman and gangster holding a group hostage in a motel during a hurricane is enough to set the allegorical stage. We want more and are not satisfied with enough.
Obesity, like smoking and drug addition, is not a malady. It is the inability of a person to say they’ve had enough. Society as a whole pays the bills for these gluttons. All of the drug addicts’ hospital interventions and extraordinary treatments to keep them alive with failed organs and body functions as well as communicable diseases is being paid for by America’s vanishing middle class.
At the same time this middle class sees diminishing returns from being responsible citizens. Their savings are not receiving interest in banks. U.S. Treasury obligations have fallen to the lowest interest returns in history. Little is manufactured in the U.S. Jobs are being exported to other countries and the daily influx of cheap illegal immigrant labor threatens American’s very existence in the workplace. While predictions of inflation arouse great fear among the middle class it is only one reason for gluttony.
That is why Communism will always fail as a societal way of life. Somehow the human being craves satisfaction that comes from work. We desire to be productive members of society, to build a future for ourselves and our families with our own hands and industry. If everything we do is going to get thrown into a pool and we all share in it equally there is little incentive to knock ourselves out. If we get more on the dole than by working, why work.
How simple and how apt in today’s society were FDR’s words: “The way to save is to stop.”
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