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Townhall
Finance...
A
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Ransom
Decenber 8, 2011
We’ve
already established that no one
will go to jail over $40 billion turfing of the brokerage firm MF
Global, one
of history’s largest bankruptcies.
MF
Global died by the hand of the
former Jon Corzine, the former golden boy at Goldman Sachs, the former
Senator,
the former Governor, the former Obama guru with a master’s degree from
the
University of Chicago; the sage with the Sixties beard wrapped in a
custom-made
Burberry suit and tie.
Like
a lot of stories these days,
Chicago works its way in there like a burr buried deep in someone’s
hair since
the 1960s.
If
you are like me, you’re about as
tired of my hometown of Chicago as the Detroit Lions are of Soldier
Field. You
are as tired of being ruled by aging hippies as you are of seeing the
17 daily
reruns of the Big Chill, the Deer Hunter and Born on the Fourth of July
on
movie channels.
Chicago’s
become the punchline behind
the joke on the Obama administration in the same way that Monica
Lewinsky
became the punchline for the joke on Bill Clinton’s administration.
Metaphorically,
there’s a great big
stain splotching up the frock Chicago’s wearing. And we don’t have to
wait for
the DNA test to show who the culprits are or what they are up to.
You
can tell them by the Goldman and
the Sachs, the Princetons, the Yales, the Harvards, the clubs, the
honors, the
appointments, the fundraisers, the central banks, the mob.
So
there is much more to it than the
merely personal story of one or two men.
The
rise and fall of Jon Corzine is an
important story, in the same way the Rod Blagojevich story is important
because
it frames the flaws in our country vividly.
That
these two deeply imperfect men were
pushed forward vigorously as leaders in state and industry, should give
pause
to anyone who hopes that America’s best days are not behind us. One will end up in jail
because he didn’t
belong to either Goldman or Sachs, and one will skate because he went
to the
right school; he’ll likely do more than skate actually.
Look
for Corzine to end up like the
Dick Morris of the left, making millions from the comfort of a TV
studio,
because a big fat TV contract is the ultimate reward for ultimate
incompetence.
“I
never wonder to see men wicked, but
I often wonder to see them not ashamed,” wrote Jonathan Swift well
prior to the
age of 600 digital channels that need content.
How
we end the practice of rewarding
and advancing incompetents like Corzine and Blagojevich at the top of
the
leadership food chain will go a long way toward explaining how America
can
become great again.
Let’s
be clear about this: Somewhere
along the line, this country stopped being a meritocracy and instead
became a
Confederacy of Dunces to use another Swiftian phrase: “When a true
genius
appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces
are all in
confederacy against him,” wrote Swift.
We
didn’t get into a debt problem in
this country because we needed the money; we didn’t meltdown the
housing market
because homeownership is less important now than it was 30 years ago;
we didn’t
make a wreck of healthcare because healthcare delivery is very
different today
than it has ever been.
Instead,
all we have done is let the
dunces confederate against the genius of America.
We’re
surrounded by those dunces, in
the UN, in Congress, on Wall Street, in the White House, the state
house, in
think tanks, in associations, in non-profits.
Where
the public good is at stake, we
are a nation of idiot savants, with a special emphasis on the word
“idiot.”
It’s
time for America’s genius to
break up the confederacy for good and all.
Read
this and other columns at
Townhall Finance
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