Jerry Pournelle on Tea Parties and the future

Great couple of comments from writer Jerry Pournelle:

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Apparently the Tea Parties were a success: at least they seem to have upset Pelosi and Company. The media doesn't quite know what to make of all that. On the other hand it's easy for us to make too much of it; we still don't have an identifiable leader, and it's not clear that the Country Club Republicans have learned (or forgotten) anything. The next step is the California ballot propositions. Nothing can stop the wave of higher taxes, but defeating the propositions despite their adulation from both parties and all the media would establish that progress is possible. By progress I mean, of course, reducing the size and cost of government.

The way things are headed now, the best career is a government job. Use the time you have to put in to learn how to do something you want to do, then use your retirement time to do it. It's not spectacular, and having the best and the brightest become government time servers won't do much for the economy, but you won't have to work very hard and you can retire without having to scrabble for your next meal. At my age that seems far more attractive than it did thirty years ago. Given the economy and the war on business and success ushered in the last election -- and the steps now being taken to make the new trend toward Europeanization of America permanent and irreversible -- young people ought to think hard about where they will be in thirty or forty years. Live long and prosper. But do not take the government as an example. Save, be thrifty, and do all your paperwork. Your real life will begin when you retire.

From the liberal view, the Old America is gone, finished off in the last election, and the trend toward government control of everything is now on track and inevitable, and the rules can be changed so that nothing can be done about that. We have seen their justification in articles about how the US is far behind Europe in civilization, as well as here.

The latest memo from the Department of Homeland Security is an example; and the Tea Parties will not curb enthusiasm for these new measures.

Sad to say, he is spot on regarding going to work for the government and following your bliss on retirement. When I was growing up, one in 19 people worked for some form of government. Now it is one in six.