Teachable Moment

More like this, please:

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We're in a rare seismic moment where something so horrific is happening that there's no way to hide the reality. Time for a major change, including manufacturing and behavior. Are we citizens first or are we consumers first? Is there a common good where we must come together to preserve this world for our children, or do we just grab whatever we can, build whatever security we can, and have our families hole up until the earth falls off its axis and mass suicide becomes the only logical alternative?

One thing I've read recently is how bad we are at imagining and preparing for the low-likelihood, high impact events, like the mortgage meltdown and deep-water oil exploration disaster. I feel like we were better at it in the middle of the 20th Century, but somehow we've grown so over reliant on technology, easy credit, comfort and Hollywood special effects that we're no longer preparing for the worst.

This is essentially a conservative argument in the classic sense rather than the mutated version of today. Conservatism shouldn't be "Drill, baby, drill," like some entitled moron, but conserve, baby, conserve. Conserve investments, conserve the planet, prepare for the seven lean years instead of, as Bush/Cheney did, spent everything saved during the seven fat years (when Clinton/Gore ran up a surplus).

While there's spending now to shore up our nation's populace during this horrific period of unemployment, caused by the policies of the previous eight years as well as practices begun under the Clinton Administration all the way back to the wildly irresponsible Reagan deregulation of the financial markets, in some sense President Obama is the last best hope for a conservative future, small "c." His handling of his personal life -- steadfast in marriage, writes his own books, self-made man, concern for community going back to his early organizer days -- is exemplary from a conservative viewpoints.

Moreso than, say, a GOP gubernatorial candidate in South Carolina.