Great idea for a thread.
I'll tell you what happened to it: the 20th century, and two momentous events:
1. The Progressive Movement
2. The Student Radicals of the '60's.
"The breakup of this
300-year-old consensus on the work ethic began with the cultural protests of the 1960s, which questioned and discarded many traditional American virtues. The roots of this breakup lay in what Daniel Bell described in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism as the
rejection of traditional bourgeois qualities by late-nineteenth-century European artists and intellectuals who sought “
to substitute for religion or morality an aesthetic justification of life.” By the 1960s, that modernist tendency had evolved into
a credo of self-fulfillment in which “nothing is forbidden, all is to be explored,” Bell wrote. Out went the
Protestant ethic’s prudence, thrift, temperance, self-discipline, and deferral of gratification. Weakened along with all these virtues that made up the American work ethic was Americans’ belief in the value of work itself. Along with “turning on” and “tuning in,” the sixties protesters also “dropped out.” As the editor of the 1973 American Work Ethic noted, “affluence, hedonism and radicalism” were turning many Americans away from work and the pursuit of career advancement…"
Whatever Happened to the Work Ethic? by Steven Malanga, City Journal Summer 2009
Yep. But I'm a firm believer in what I call the 'pendulum of history'. Political movements ebb and flow from conservative to liberal and last in about 2-4 generation cycles (between 25 and 125 years) The Progressive influence on America (and the world) was born in the French Revolution when the concept of collective rights, over individual rights were chosen. Due to the nature of the Napoleonic wars, American Civil War and the burgeoning industrial age, Progressivism did not burst again onto the scene till about 1890. This was a very strong conservative period after having a peak during the American/French Revolution ended the previous liberal epoch.
But coming with the beginning of the labor movement and anarchists of the 1890's, fed up with abuse created by uncontrolled industrialists turning nations into civic cesspools, it was a long overdue reaction and ultimately a positive for restoring liberty to society. Now that government tyranny had been removed, the tyranny of wealth was addressed. So the oppression of the 'plutocrat' was rolled back with the trusts and monopolies, trading rules and guardrails were erected to protect society from the abuse of the corporation.
Unnnnnfortunately.... the pendulum of history kept swinging from a potential nice balance into the New Deal. The driving forces of progressivism, kept on swinging, and as it grew in promenance from the 30's through the 70's, the sins of this new 'freedom' from the plutocrats devolved into dependence on those who formerly served to protect their rights. Now, instead of having the right to work, they were owed a living regardless of their own merits. This philosophy of entitlement, because we are/were a rich nation was able to get entrenched because we could out earn the costs of such a life.
Then 9/11 happened and we hit a 'hard stop' to this latest liberal era. Like the Titanic's sinking in a way signaled an end to the hegemony of the Industrialist Era of Robber Baron control, 9/11 has signaled the rapidly approaching end of the Liberal Entitlement Era. It will take a few years more of shaking and quivvering from the impact into that hard stop (potentially 10-15 years sooner than what it would have been if not for that event). This is where we sit now... the pendulum motionless for a moment at it's apogee, and now... with the collapse of the US economy in the next few weeks and months, it will begin to rapidly swing the other way.
The flower children, hippies, yippies, beatniks, organizers and radical leftists who have ushered us towards what they believed a utopia will have to see all the things they had achieved be rolled back as the rest of society says "we've gone too far, let us make some reasonable corrections." I am not saying you'll watch the reversal of civil rights, or the return of slavery like some hyperventilating moron may try to say. I'm not saying that all labor protections will go away and we'll have dirty water and air overnight.
On the contrary, we will be seeing a period of time where the cost of these reforms will be evaluated and then cut back or made appropriate so individual liberty and community responsibility can live together in more or less peaceful coexistence.
With a very tall and secure fence between them.
