For years I have argued to my disbelieving Mother that the decline of American Exceptionalism can be traced directly to the institution of the Designated Hitter Rule in Major League Baseball.  I have long promoted the belief that telling the youth of America that you don’t have to hit or field if you are good at one or the other but not both is akin to taking the fear of failure away from the up and coming leadership of the country.

But mostly MLB Rule 6.10 is symptomatic of an attitude that crept into the American zeitgeist that refused to accept failure as a consequence of inadequacy.  The “feel good about yourself”, “do it if it feels good”, “to thine own self be true”, “anti-establishment” mentality made it make sense to have pitchers sit out their turn at bat but still have the ball in their hand to throw at the other teams best hitters. Giving rise to expect actions that have no consequence. That 60’s revolution of hedonism over discipline made it make sense that players who could no longer compete as complete players with younger more talented rookies could just avoid the glaring holes in their game and only do that which came easy to them.

This mindset leads to the DH rule and sadly, far more.  It lead to no fault divorce, abortion on demand as a means of birth control, reporting of “news” without concern about facts or sources, retirement plans without worry about how to pay for them and union heavy corporations  that are “too big to fail”.  It allowed countless university students to think it was reasonable to get a degree in music theory and that there would actually be a job for a music theorist waiting after graduation.  While there is certainly a societal need for the occasional graduate with a degree in social anthropology it turns out that the vast majority of that need is in the food service industry.  These personally gratifying decisions lead us to a world in which there are too many Poli-Sci grads to employ and construction projects delayed for years at a time because there are not enough certified welders.  Those choices to find one-self in the arts lead to national funding of the arts that cannot be cut because there are so many nationally funded artists; cowboy poets for instance.  These choices created laws that forced mortgage banks to accept loans based on what people claimed they earned; not what they could prove they earned.  Laws were created that forced banks to make loans to people based on criteria completely unrelated to the ability to pay back the loan and of course the loans were not repaid. This DH attitude allows for incredibly high unemployment among the liberal arts crowd giving them time to protest reality.  OWS’ers squatting like bums sponging off of the public are protesting the results of a society acquiescing to these same protests from 45 years earlier.  But, the DH paradigm is so ingrained that they cannot see they beg to be further victimized by the do-gooders who enslaved them in the first place.

The facts are unavoidable; there is no money to pay for feeling good about one-self.  There is enough money to pay for those who cannot survive without help but nowhere near enough money to pay for those who cannot survive doing only what they want. This DH philosophy has convinced people that they truly cannot compete and survive, that opportunity is not available to them and that without the force of the guns of government they will further founder and fail.

The facts are quite the opposite.  A bigger government only means being governed more and free less.  Less freedom means less opportunity, and less personal success and less personal validation.  Big government solutions to problems mean far fewer personally tailored solutions and far more servitude to the public good.  Big government will still need welders and regardless of your dream to study Mozart’s utilization of tonal compatibility you may well find yourself listening to the discordant melodies of a government supplied metal grinder and MIG welder.

Be careful what you wish for…