The Real "Hope"

As the economy tumbles into a long and deep recession; as the stock market loses 40 percent of its value; as doctrinaire and incompetent politicians grapple with ill-conceived bail-out programs and “stimulus” packages that will do little good and may actually create harmful unintended consequences; as unemployment numbers shoot upward; as a new President tries his best to address a collection of economic problems that would make FDR shudder, it’s awfully easy to take on a dark world-view and an even darker short-term outlook.

A commenter at The Belmont Club named “Programmer” comments:

Hope, you say? Hope! What is hope? Well laddy, I’ll be telling ye what hope is! Hope is a young guy quitting Harvard and taking his version of BASIC around until Altair bought it, then keep on marketing until other platforms bought it, which eventually led to Vista!

Hope is two guys working in a garage and finally hitting big when they sold their first 50 computers to a Byte shop. This, of course, led to the iPhone, etc.

Hope is: In 1945, Sam and Helen Walton moved to Newport, Arkansas to breathe life into an old Ben Franklin store. It had been doing poorly and was in need of new ownership. Sam Walton was just the man for the job.

Hope is: Out in America right now, right this darn minute, somebody, or probably a whole lot of somebodies) is/are working on ideas that are the next big ideas. The next wave. The next waves. Robots! Nanobots! Cold fusion! Longevity! Teleportation! Safe desktop nuclear reactors. Just like the desktop computer boom, just like the dot com boom, like the oil boom, the railroad boom, like…, like…, well you get the idea. Stop all this gloom and doom. The present is a infinitely small edge of now sweeping through time, but it is remarkably solid. We cannot reach back through it and change the past, only observe it dimly receding into dust, We cannot break throught the present to see the future, only make guesses guided by what we observe in the vanishing past and learn in the now. So brace yourselves, place your bets, and get ready for what’s coming. President elect Obama is right about one thing, for sure. Change is coming. YeeeeeeeHawwwwwww! What a ride!

Too often, we hear Left-leaning politicians state that the American dream is dead and that the middle class is broken. To listen to these class-warriors, our only hope is big government and a growing stream of entitlements that will bankrupt an already burdened country. “Programmer” disagrees, arguing that our real hope is the millions of Americans who don’t look for handout and instead rely on their own intelligence, ingenuity, and drive to build a better life for themselves and their families. I think “Programmer” may have it exactly right.