Back in 1791, the United States had a brand new constitution giving federal government new powers to replace the weak, old Articles of Confederation. The nation also found itself with huge debts, cost of the American Revolution.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton had an idea. He’d tax whiskey. He reasoned this would raise money to pay the national debt and also act as a move toward “social discipline.” In fact he said this was more of a reason for it than the income.
There was no Jack Daniels distillery in the 18th century. Our considerable whiskey output came from backwoodsmen who famously took a barrel of booze downriver easier than a wagonload of corn. These fellows weren’t sitting still for taxes on their business. There also was something in the new law that rankled the smaller distillers, because it gave a break to the larger distillers. George Washington, only the president, was among this group of larger manufacturers of euphoric spirits.
The small distillers got out their muskets. Washington, the man, responded with troops. The affair eventually calmed.
It was a simple event. There was a tax imposed by the government. It was done favoring the wealthier. Right and wrong were clearly evident. One would suppose every musket owner in the land had an opinion, honestly and intelligently arrived at. Basic knowledge was enough to bring a person to a sensible decision.
Contrast that with today’s global warming, geo-politics, petroleum prices and this mysterious credit failure. To these problems, the American public brings the same sort of grab-the-gun problem solving that worked 200 years ago. It’s no longer good enough.
Back in the ‘sixties, the idea of an ombudsman for newspapers was catching on. Here and there this position today answers the reading public’s complaints. Back in the day, Washington Post Editor Bill Bradlee appointed as the paper’s ombudsman one Bill Green from central North Carolina.
Naming this unknown to an important position in one of the nation’s foremost newspapers left the media in a twitter. One contacted Green and speculated that he brought “folk wisdom” to the job. Green tersely replied from his home near Durham, “There’s no folk wisdom out here.”
That was maybe 35 years ago. Today, one might search for folk wisdom and along the way also find the tooth fairy and Easter Bunny. Things haven’t changed in the past 35 years. Or maybe they have. We’ve had all those decades of TV and pro wrestling and hip-hop and faith-based justice, health, welfare and education departments.
Maybe the level of folk wisdom that Green saw as nonexistent in other years has been lowered.
The market’s going to hell!
“Hon’ bring me another lite.”
Current folk wisdom has it that global warming is a liberal conspiracy, that stem cell research will kill babies, that billions of barrels are out there if we but drill for it, that we can make it without a financial system and that every citizen should carry an AK-47 because the Canadians may be on the march as we speak.
God bless America.
Really. |
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