MANA not MAGA

Make America a Nation Again

I was inspired to write this article after reading this astute piece by Catholic writer Charles Carroll on the Old Glory Club Substack.

The reason there is tension within the Trump coalition over the H-1B1 issue is that there is confusion about what the G in MAGA means. What would make America great again? What is great? I am going to tell you what I think it means in this article.

For many in the MAGA movement, and probably even Trump himself, great means having a roaring economy, a powerful military, and a lot of cool unregulated companies with powerful CEO’s making awesome shit and lots of money. This attitude is reflected in the “winning” metaphor that we hear so often from Trump and from many of his capitalist supporters on X. We hear it from Muskaswamy.

That crass attitude does nothing for me and it is inconsistent with the hopes of American Nationalists. We want to Make America a Nation Again.

A nation is a group of people with a common culture that share a geographic location.

That is what we want.

We want America to be seen as a people not an idea.

The people are the descendants of the founding European stock and the willing accommodators from other groups that created and maintained the America Nation. That includes American slaves, earlier Americans, and indentured servants who were part of the fabric of the American Community from the beginning of the nation or have come to realize the exceptionality of this nation even if their ancestors were once subjugated or colonized by Europeans. It does not include people that happen to have immigrated here or live here now, but have made no contribution to or may be hostile to the heritage Americans that created the nation. It does not include people that hate or are envious of heritage Americans or who believe the American Nation itself is illegitimate. Obviously, people that believe the exceptional characteristics of the American Community should be abandoned because they represent white supremacy are not Americans. They are anti-Americans. In my opinion, United States citizenship does not automatically make one an American.

We want a shared culture, which is:

The arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, and other products of human work and thought considered as a unit, especially with regard to a particular time or social group.

We know what that culture entails because we had it in the past and there are still remnants of it in parts of the United States. We have it here in North Idaho where I live because our area is almost exclusively inhabited by the grateful descendants of the people that created the American culture, and are still living in accordance with the expectations of that culture.

Our people are great people and they made a great culture that stemmed from their enduring values that emanated from their European bio-spirit.

In my first book, Discovering Possibility: A Common Sense Conservative Manifesto, I tried to capture a few of those core European-inspired values, namely freedom, personal responsibility, neighborliness, and thrift. These are the values that made American communities across the land exceptional, and these values are evaporating.

The colonizers that want to destroy the American Community have actively worked to dismantle these values because they have understood that doing so would bring down a nation. They were correct. As I posited in my book, restoring the American Nation would begin with reinvigorating its core values. That is what we want MAGA to do.

Notice I use the terms American Community and American Nation interchangeably.

Consequently, we recoil at the notion that the United States should buy another country, or we need to import “great talent” for our businesses. We abhor bombastic foreign policy because that does not jibe with how we see ourselves as a people. We do not understand why our politicians are bribing leaders in other nations with foreign aid. We do not operate that way. We abhor attempts to shame us because, while we understand the mistakes we have made in the past, we see no benefit to our existence by wallowing in guilt. We believe empire-building and empire maintenance are inconsistent with having a high-trust, shared culture. We despise the consumer and entertainment ethos that has replaced the authentic, Christian-rooted ethical system of our heritage. We hate it when our leaders embody those crass characteristics. We understand that diversity is not a strength, and equity is not possible or advisable.

America First means placing traditional American culture and its heritage people first.

Below are the chapters from Discovering Possibility on personal responsibility, neighborliness, and thrift that are three of the core aspects of traditional American culture that we want MANA to restore and reinvigorate. I wrote this in 2011.

Personal Responsibility

Personal responsibility means I am the master of my own destiny. It is the opposite of entitlement thinking that suggests others are responsible to make me happy. Free individuals are free precisely because they have taken responsibility for their own lives and let go of whatever primitive impulses they may have employed in the past to blame others for their own lack of happiness. The empowered individual does not let impediments get in the way of his own existential search for happiness, indeed he sees temporary obstacles as necessary challenges in the quest for meaning, flow, and the good life. He does not live in quiet desperation as Henry David Thoreau noted in his famous characterization of most men, but instead, he desperately seeks his own happiness by taking responsibility without blame. He does not blame God nor man for his lack of success. He knows he is the master of his own destiny and he is up to the challenge. This is a distinctly American attitude that is the overriding theme contained in the Declaration of Independence.

Most Americans take this personal responsibility ethic for granted, but unfortunately there are growing numbers of people that no longer appreciate the self evidence of this fundamental truth. This profound moral degradation is the greatest danger we are facing, and something that must be restored if we are to reinvigorate our nation. An irresponsible people cannot be a successful people.

The prevailing new secular religion in Cool America is an adolescent fantasy and it has done great damage to us as a people. The guarantee of success without having earned it damages resilience and makes one soft. It also punishes real success, which creates an environment of mediocrity. In his excellent book, The War on Success, author Tommy Newberry offers the following powerful critique of socialist America:

“For statists, above all else, things must be fair. In addition, by “things” they mean everything. In addition, by “fair”, they do not mean equal opportunity or equal rules – they mean equal outcomes.

The problem is life is naturally unfair. Liberty breeds inequality – when people are free, those who are smarter, better motivated, and harder working will achieve more than others. Therefore, the only way to ensure equal outcomes is to strangle liberty. In other words, the more government tries to make life fair, the less fair it becomes.”

The progressive political ideology, and indeed the overriding Marxist socio-economic philosophy that supports it, by definition, hold that people are motivated by their status as victims. Victim thinking and a sense of entitlement are built into those philosophies necessarily. A core tenet of Marxism is that socio-cultural changes can only occur when enough people feel oppressed and finally revolt against the Capitalist ruling class that is seen to be the oppressor. Another way of saying this is the Marxist economic philosophy and all of its Neo-Marxist institutional extensions need people that experience themselves as victims for their programs to thrive. Marxist hustlers, as I refer to them, seek to make the population feel as powerless as possible and to eschew the concept of personal responsibility. If people are responsible for their own lives and are empowered to create their own opportunities for success, the Marxist narrative is destroyed. Consequently Marxist hustlers do what they can to advance the victim narrative, which is antithetical to the core American narratives of rugged individualism and personal responsibility.

Thus, promoting personal responsibility is the antidote to Marxism and is not only good for people psychologically, but it also creates healthier communities where people take responsibility for their actions and are better neighbors. The drip drip drip of Marxist thinking and Marxist institutionalization in America is insidious and destroys the character of the community by feeding entitlement and irresponsibility. If we are to restore the American community we must begin with a reinvigoration of personal responsibility at every level of society.

The most prominent institutions for the perpetuation of irresponsibility and the glorification of victim thinking in America today are associated with human services and education, the professions that are in the greatest need of reform in America. These professions are force-feeding this flawed thinking on unsuspecting victims starting at impressionable ages and continuously promoting their propaganda throughout the secondary and post-secondary American educational and human services systems. The culture of the human services and educational systems fosters an insidious groupthink that is at odds with a culture of personal responsibility. Purveyors of the dominant oppressor-focused political orthodoxy frequently attempt to smear those that would challenge their intellectual superiority. If you do not believe this is true, try speaking up for personal responsibility at a community meeting in a human services or educational setting and see what happens. Most likely you will be ignored or ridiculed.

According to David Horowitz, former 1960’s era radical turned freedom fighter, the oppressor narrative in universities is most often found in our women’s studies, humanities, English, human services, and social studies programs and is connected with a blame America belief system that holds the United States responsible for most of the problems in the world. It sees Capitalism as evil and fosters a socialistic ethic for advancing civilization. These fields tend to be dominated by gender feminists who also believe the United States is a misogynist country that needs to be reformed. Gender feminists have been engaging in their revolution one student at a time for several decades. Often their reforms involve taking power away from men, the perceived villains, so that women, the perceived victims, can get more power in a society that not surprisingly, is becoming increasingly matriarchal.

Gender feminism, as opposed to Classical feminism has alienated many men and women who wish for an honest debate about gender roles and gender differences instead of a war. Instead of encouraging personal responsibility, gender feminists have often advocated using legal remedies to “level the playing field,” which has had the effect of fostering an us vs. them climate in gender relations. Their misplaced notions about gender roles in America have created a cynical and self-loathing educated citizenry that actively advocates for social policies that are detrimental to the people of the United States. The enacted policies frequently exalt victimization and eschew personal responsibility. Many of us in the Conservative Movement believe the illegitimate promotion of Radical Gender feminism has come at the expense of healthy masculinity.

In my opinion, the Restoration Movement in the United States needs to focus significant attention on the human services and education systems, and particularly the specific disciplines in education I mentioned earlier. A new crop of realistic educators needs to offer an alternative narrative to Gender feminism, and other oppression narratives such as the alternative I am advocating here that is more realistic and less steeped in victim politics. It will take more than a value neutral position to undo the damage that has been done to personal responsibility and to our boys and girls for decades. It will take bold rhetoric and action. People will need to rediscover the truth of the enlightenment, let go of societal guilt, and foster a new emphasis on personal responsibility without apology if we are to restore our nation. I hope my work as a community builder can have some positive influence in that regard.

As I write this chapter, our world is in the midst of an economic crisis brought on by the bursting of a huge bubble that was created by a failure of personal responsibility at every level of society. The dominant media narrative, that I find depressing, is that evil corporations are preying on innocent citizens. The truth is that for decades, individual Americans, American businesspeople, and indeed much of the world believed they could have it all. Families, businesses, financial institutions, and governments lived well beyond their means in an easy credit fantasy world that eventually collapsed. Huge injections of new, make believe money in the form of “stimulus” are temporarily keeping the world economy out of depression but are saddling the Millennial Generation with a debt load from which it may never be able to recover – that is unless we act fast to restore prudence and sanity. Our leaders are giving us exactly what we do not need – so what else is new? A responsible people would take its medicine, regroup, and restore its character. Unfortunately we are not a responsible people because there are those that maintain political power by keeping people stuck by offering destructive false benevolence to unsuspecting recipients.

I believe personal responsibility and thrift are interconnected aspects of a healthy and prosperous life. Entitlement and sloth are interconnected characteristics of failed individuals, failed communities, and failed civilizations.

There is some good news as some European leaders and Canadians are seemingly rejecting the Keynesian theory of economics and adopting some serious austerity measures to cut spending in their entitlement based economies. Great Britain and Canada are adopting as much as twenty-five percent reductions in government spending in order to forestall what their leaders believe could be economic collapse in their countries. This is a sign that some world leaders are reconsidering the “have it all” mentality that has dominated western thinking for decades. It is a glimmer of hope in an otherwise destructive landscape. America seems to be lagging behind its more realistic allies, although if my premise in this book is correct, 2011 will be the beginning of a long period of economic austerity to the United States. A new day may be dawning. (I was wrong!)

Neighborliness

Neighborliness is the act of free people respecting and helping each other. It requires free will and conscious activity. Neighborliness is an economic, social, and spiritual concept. While neighborliness is sometimes conceptualized as a one-way effort, it is by definition a social action because there is an actor and a receiver. Neighborliness is fundamentally a two-way exchange of services, goods, or positive energies between people exercising their free will for mutual benefit. The spiritual aspect of neighborliness is obvious. When that mutual exchange of goods or energies occurs, humanity benefits because each actor is improved and thus, in a better position to transmit positive energy elsewhere.

What are the psychological requirements and ramifications of neighborliness? Most importantly, one needs to embrace his own capacity to be helpful to others and he needs to be able to accept help from others. Each of these capacities is more difficult than it sounds because it opens one up for vulnerability. Giving and receiving are risky, thus being an effective neighbor requires a basic psychological centeredness that family therapist, Murray Bowen termed differentiation that protects the ego from too much anxiety. This is a quality European man has mastered because of his advanced interpersonal capacities, and something that other groups do less well.

Often, folks that struggle with neighborliness are either fearful of abandonment or engulfment – being left behind or being smothered. It takes a modicum of differentiation to be able to tolerate the closeness that neighborliness offers. Differentiation is also known as the psychological freedom to give and take without fear, thus given this definition, neighborliness is a social action that requires an advanced psychological capacity that is a core strength of Western man.

Some people grow up in stable situations with well-differentiated parents that foster good differentiation and others are not so lucky. It takes some work for those in the latter group to develop a better capacity for neighborliness, and unfortunately, as an American community we are doing a poor job at helping folks develop this capacity in their daily interactions within the developmental landscape. So, it may take some intentionality for some people to build a better relational capacity. Those efforts to build stronger psychological muscles will pay dividends for individuals and communities as we go about the task of reinvigorating our American Nation.

Free people make healthy communities because they have an investment in creating the ordered liberty that will allow their families to thrive. They understand freedom can only be sustained if there is also neighborliness. This idea comes directly from the social contract theory that undergirded the birth of the American Nation. Freedom without neighborliness is what sociologist Emile Durkheim referred to as anomie, the feeling of extreme normlessness, which many socialists and anarchists consider an evolutionary outcome of individualist free market Capitalism. Americans know it is not inevitable that free Western societies get more and more atomized as long as their citizens are an ethical people who value their sense of belonging, and who are capable of neighborliness. If those higher order conditions are lacking, anomie is inevitable.

America thrives because we have an acculturation process that ensures individual liberty and cross-cultural connectivity. Thus, one of the greatest dangers we are facing as a nation today is that our growing ethnic and cultural diversity will not also come with the requirement to embrace American notions of neighborliness. Without neighborliness (homogenous, high trust relationships) we cannot enjoy the harmonious social connectivity that our local American communities need to flourish.

As Sociologist Robert Putnam points out, the more diverse a community is, the greater the challenges it faces. According to Putnam, in more diverse communities people tend to vote less and volunteer less and there tends to be less civic engagement.

Therefore, the conventional wisdom, diversity is our strength, seems to be an incomplete notion that demands further investigation. This conventional wisdom may be true, but as Putnam points out there are greater challenges with diversity than we may want to acknowledge. Diversity presents significant challenges to social connectivity.

If one looks around the world he sees increasing division and strife as diversity increases, especially in places like Europe and the Middle East where religious and ethnic divisions are on the rise. America, which is one of the most ethnically diverse nations on earth, seems to be handling its diversity challenge about as well as anyone, a fact that our detractors around the world are loath to admit. It may be that our traditional American notions of pluralism with voluntary neighborliness are thus underrated and essential elements for any society that wishes to overcome the challenges offered by growing ethnic and cultural diversity. We may have something to teach the world. (I was wrong about this too!)

Neighborliness within does not necessarily mean Americans can not also be good global neighbors or that smaller enclaves cannot also continue to rejoice in their distinctness. On the contrary, when folks know who they are and have pride in themselves and their immediate associations they also tend to be better citizens in the larger world. This is the strength of nationalism and the weakness of globalism. Solid core identity actually enhances inclusivity because the individual or the group does not need to prove his cultural integrity to himself and to outsiders. He is not afraid he will perish and therefore he does not strike out at challenges to his core. Neighborliness is really having enough confidence in oneself and in one’s community so he can expose his beliefs to other ideas without fear of engulfment or annihilation.

In contrast with Europeans, Americans have always relied on the civil society to uphold the promise of the social contract by forming self-governing neighborhood associations. These associations were a means for involved neighbors to support each other and to simultaneously foster the interests of their families. Most Americans believe self interest and community interest go hand in hand although in recent years institutional power has begun to overwhelm natural supports in communities. This emerging condition is most apparent in our urban centers where blight and government interference are bedfellows, but it has recently crept into our smaller communities too. Therefore, deconstruction and restoration will mean creating pathways for more Americans to free themselves from professionalization and institutionalization so as to (re)empower natural support systems (parallel economies). (I was 100% correct about this!)

One of the aspects of American life that destroys neighborliness is the perpetually expanding giant services sector of our economy, which is the fastest growing segment of our overall economy. This is the central focus of one of my favorite books, John McKnight’s The Careless Society. McKnight makes the astute point that service providers need an ever-increasing supply of clients in order to make a living, and thus we have developed an economic system that goes about clientizing citizens. Instead of seeking healthy lifestyle solutions and neighborly charity from friends we now tend to turn to professionals with the misguided hope they will therapize, medicalize, or social work us to health. (Sound familiar?)

While this idea has been around since Aristotle, in the modern era this critique was most prominently put forward by Ivan Illich, who like McKnight, believed industrialized society was by its very function, causing deviance and illness. Illich lamented the counterproductivity of over-industrialized civilization and believed over-institutionalization was socially and culturally iatrogenic. He believed many institutions had become counterproductive to their original intent. If industrial society was to rediscover healthier living, according to Illich, it would need to deconstruct institutional systems and their reach so man could regain control over his environment. Illich’s words are especially meaningful today as we look at a behemoth health and social services system that is bankrupt and broken while the social, physical, and spiritual health of the population gets continually worse.

This understanding has created a lot of cognitive dissonance for me as a service provider as I have seen the way the American community has evolved toward a less healthy state to make room for our growing profession. The phrase for this phenomenon is social and cultural iatrogenesis – the proposed cure causes the illness. The incidence increase in depression, divorce, unwed parenting, and many other social maladies as the numbers in the services professions have grown, provides correlational evidence for social and cultural iatrogenesis. McNight and Illich are right, that we professionals need clients to expand our monetary bases. This phenomenon presents an awful paradox that our nation needs to face. (It is worse today!)

Assuredly, efforts to deconstruct this iatrogenic helping system will be met with tremendous opposition from those that have a monetary stake in maintaining or growing the existing system. However, I believe if we were to deconstruct the human services system in America in order to create more simplicity, effectiveness, and efficiency, the health of the nation would improve dramatically (Hear that DOGE?). We offer an organization-specific transformation program to contribute to such a reform at A Place for Possibilities. (I offer targeted consulting.) The current economic conditions in the United States may bring about a necessary deconstruction very soon.

Medicaid and Medicare are in crisis. This is how I wrote about their impending overhaul on June 8, 2010 on our blog, Free Spirits for Truth and Common Sense:

“The human services sector of the American economy is the largest segment of the services sector, which is the largest sector of the American economy. Public human services are largely funded by Medicaid and to some extent Medicare, along with other public financing from government grants. Because the burst in the economic bubble that was driven by the obscene national debt is finally getting the attention it needs, the federal government will no longer have the political clout it needs to borrow or print money at will (although they will try for as long as they can). The Keynesian Economists, with their emphasis on "stimulus" spending, which so far has largely been in the form of continued payouts to services sector unions and other government stakeholders and friends, are losing the economic argument. Therefore, it appears that the federal government and many states will soon cut Medicaid funding.

The states, that are completely dependent on the fifty percent federal government match for all Medicaid dollars that is guaranteed by law, will be unable to continue services as usual, services that have increased dramatically during the bubble years. These cuts and associated shortfalls are happening right now. It will create a huge outcry from the usual cultural Marxist advocates who will claim the government is evil, unfair, and racist, even though the motivation for the outcry will not really be about client care but in reality, about the Medicaid created jobs, perks, and pensions that are in jeopardy when these funds are cut. If integrity prevails, the fiscal realists will win out and the funds will be cut in spite of the rage. If the government gives in again we will merely be pushing the problem a bit further down the road.

As this is happening in parts of Europe, it has lead to riots in the streets by government employee unions and Communists. Unfortunately, that same outcome is likely in the United States, although the overt Communist presence will be muted. But if we keep our heads, when the dust settles we will be left with a need for a new type of human services system that is more efficient, necessarily, and less reliant on government funding because there will be a lot less left to go around. What will that new system entail?

If my generation does not have the courage to do the right thing, Millennial leaders should immediately go about the business of intentionally de-funding and deconstructing our behemoth human services system in order to improve the health of the nation. That step would renew neighborliness more than any other systemic action. Of course it would be met with tremendous opposition from stakeholders in that system so it will take real courage to get it done. The time is now. Unfortunately because my generation lacks courage, and politicians have been buying votes through that system for decades, and consequently many of us are feeding at the human services trough, it may take the full collapse of the economy to bring it about.”

In addition to the reasons above, there are a couple of other factors that have contributed to the dramatic shift toward a services economy. The increase in women relative to men in university enrollment and the corresponding rise of women in the professional workforce means there are growing numbers of workers who tend to gravitate to the helping professions. And as that sector grows it needs to sustain itself with an ever-increasing supply of workers, most of whom are women. Conversely, as the working population of women grows, that group needs an ever-increasing supply of jobs. Most of the commentary on this social trend tends to be positive although I have seen few studies that have looked at the long term implications of this development and the effects it is sure to have on the services and manufacturing sectors of the economy respectively.

This development coincides with the demise of the manufacturing sector of our economy due to high labor costs and the inability to compete with third world developing economies like China. Therefore ours has become a professional services society with most of our great minds gravitating toward financial and social services instead of engineering and science. We are no longer making things people need but instead selling people our services. At the same time we are convincing people they need more and more of those services, which are themselves iatrogenic to community health and wellbeing. Professionalization is thus an inevitable by-product of prosperity but is paradoxically also destroying creativity and community as McKnight and Illich postulated. I reinvigorated American Nation will have less professionalization and more natural community supports.

My intention is to contribute to the reversal of this several decades long trend as it not only skewed the landscape in favor of the feminine and put a lot of men out of work, but it has also disempowered neighborliness. Professional service providers are not neighbors. They are workers who are offering pseudo-kindness for money. Recipients understand the provider-user relationship is artificial and it leads to a lack of permanence and a kind of pseudo mutuality in day to day relationships. Furthermore, the ubiquitousness of those professional relationships crowds out regular neighborliness, which gives people a real sense of connection and self-worth. Too much professionalism is thus anti-community and anti-American.

A business associate is not a friend. He is a client. But many professional people are conflating the two and have few unencumbered relationships. This is creating an artificial society where people understand their relationships have dual purposes, which interferes with the human need for unconditional friendship. This phenomenon is also placing undue pressure on romantic relationships and marriages because in this artificial world of friendship people are asking for too much intimacy from their spouses. This has created a situation in which the American community is failing to meet the most basic needs of its members.

Thrift

Thrift is a nearly forgotten American virtue.

The following quote is from the excellent 2009 book, written by David Blankenhorn, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and Sorcha Brophy-Warren entitled, Franklin’s Thrift; The Lost History of An American Virtue.

“For Benjamin Franklin, who personified and promoted the idea, thrift meant working productively, consuming wisely, saving proportionally, and giving generously. Franklin's thrift became the cornerstone of a new kind of secular faith in the ordinary person's capacity to shape his lot and fortune in life.”

At almost fifteen trillion dollars per year, the economy of the United States is the largest economy in the world and consumer spending accounts for about seventy percent of our gross domestic product. The exploding new economies in China and India are entirely dependent on Americans continuing to spend profusely, an economic partnership that unfortunately we are all too willing to embrace. Think about that. Three hundred million U.S. citizens are economically responsible for a world population of almost seven billion people. What would happen to the world economy if United States consumers cut back on their spending? Many Americans have come to believe that conspicuous spending is our patriotic duty, an absurd notion, but an unfortunate reality in these troubled times.

As we have seen recently during this global economic decline, when American citizens slow their spending all of the world’s markets are affected and the entire global economic system is placed at risk. Some have called it mutually assured economic destruction, which means the United States has a symbiotic relationship with other economic powers. The symbiotic relationship ensures homeostasis because of the knowledge that a change in one country would affect another, which would create a domino effect that could lead to the demise of everyone. A more linear way of stating this unfortunate reality is that most of the world relies on excessive American consumer spending so it can keep producing goods and services, and thus the American consumer and thrift have necessarily parted company. Living an unthrifty lifestyle is built into the world homeostatic condition, which is placing an undue burden on Americans.

As I write this paragraph, the United States just contributed to the bailout of Greece through the International Monetary Fund, to the tune of several hundred billion dollars, a contribution that seems almost unworldly, and a contribution that most Americans opposed. Apparently, there may be more such bailouts in the near future along with the existing foreign aid commitments, which are already unsustainable. We are spending money we do not even know about and money we have to borrow from other countries to spend! However, as I wrote earlier, there may be some hope on the horizon because a growing percentage of Americans is rejecting this unthrifty practice. (I was wrong again!)

Our own federal spending on entitlement programs, military expansion, and wasteful bureaucracy is killing the national economy at large. As I write this, our country is running the highest monthly deficits of all time in adjusted for inflation numbers, many states are on the verge of bankruptcy because of out of control spending, and social programs that have unsustainable future liabilities. We have a financial mess on our hands. (It is even worse today, much worse!)

Many American individuals and families are in serious financial trouble. Family debt relative to disposable income was at an all time high at the end of 2009. Personal bankruptcies and housing foreclosures are also at all time highs while personal savings rates remain low (although savings rates have begun to climb in 2009-10 as more families are taking the steps necessary to balance their financial ledgers). The credit card has become the preferred way to purchase goods and services; so most Americans no longer believe reserve cash is a prerequisite to buying anything. Buy now and pay later has become the norm for many people. International spending and debt norms are mirroring what is happening on the family level in the United States.

Social psychology research indicates that people who hold a materialistic value orientation tend to score lower on scales that measure subjective wellbeing (happiness). Moreover, since people who score high on materialism tend to be more anxious and more depressed than people who score low on materialism, it stands to reason that the excessive spending associated with a materialistic value orientation may be contributing to the depressogenic condition that is afflicting so many Americans today. If our goal is to create a culture that generates better happiness, we would be wise to evaluate Americans’ spending attitudes and spending levels and create a renewed focus on thrift as a national priority. Maintaining a thrifty lifestyle is the antidote to living one’s life with a materialistic value orientation.

Thrift is a lifestyle commitment that requires prudence, responsibility, and discipline, which are forgotten aspects of the American character. The thrifty lifestyle offered one an opportunity to earn success and build stability, two important aspects of community connectivity. Thrift allowed one to establish independence and to invest in the future while building relationships with one’s neighbors. Being thrifty means one is living a life that embraces both receiving and giving, which are the basis of healthy psychological differentiation as I mentioned earlier. Therefore, while thrift is sometimes thought of as a minor virtue, in actuality it is the most comprehensive of all the American virtues I have talked about so far. Thrift is a complete concept.

Furthermore, some scholars are calling into question the conventional wisdom known as the paradox of thrift, attributed to economist, John Maynard Keynes. The paradox of thrift concept contains the seemingly logical notion that one man’s income is another man’s savings. Keynes believed if one person stops spending, especially during an economic downturn, he/she is taking money away from another person whose income depends on the others’ spending. Thrift thus becomes an unwanted individual activity because it presumably hurts others in the economy. The implication of the paradox of thrift is that a robust economy depends on high rates of spending by either individuals or governments. Consequently, in this way of thinking, thrift would be anathema to a healthy and growing capitalistic economy.

David Blankenhorn, President of the Institute for American Values, wrote the following in a Weekly Standard publication entitled: There is no Paradox of Thrift.

“Savers are actually likely to spend more than people mired in debt. Couples who practice thrift and build wealth over time have more assets and savings, which in turn become productive investments, which in turn promote economic growth and development. Such thrifty couples also tend to pay more taxes. This whole dynamic is good for families and for their society. In fact, if the goal is more stimulative spending, thrift is the main way to get there.”

So, if we are to restore a more sober and prosperous America we would be wise to dismiss the notion of the paradox of thrift. Excessive spending may have some temporary benefit for producers but it has long term negative consequences for society.

During the past sixty years, the American psychology has shifted from thrift to self-actualization and individual creative expansionism. In my opinion, this accelerating individualistic/humanistic trend has been anti-American. For as thrift is a relational concept as Franklin explained, self-actualizing consumerism without communion fosters independence without relationship. Buying stuff makes people feel good temporarily but creates a world full of stuff that lacks meaning and purpose. In a more prosperous and sober community, individual creative expansionism as a quasi-religion would be replaced by thrift in the way Benjamin Franklin, the consummate American, envisioned thrift over two hundred and fifty years ago.

We can see more evidence of the tendency of many Americans to turn from communion to self in a recent survey released by a group of scholars in the American Journal of Advertising Research. These researchers found that self-respect has become the most important social value for Americans while sense of belonging has steadily declined since the 1970’s. This is not a surprising finding, given as the authors of this study surmised, “If a person looks to him or herself as the ultimate arbiter of most things, a need for belonging ought to correspondingly diminish.” People tend to be less concerned about what others think of them, which may have some advantages from a psychological standpoint but also supports the disturbing notion that people are becoming less community-minded. Consequently, many people are willing to spend a lot of money on education and other self-improvement and less on investment in community capital. For a culture of thrift to be reinvigorated in America, that individualistic trend would need to be reversed. Thrift requires both individual discipline and social responsibility.

The media/self-help/psychotherapy humanism of today teaches people they can have it all without having to be responsible for anything but themselves. Moreover, it tells people they should not deny themselves anything because a life of abundance magically seems to make everyone better simultaneously.

Credit is there to allow individuals to get whatever they want whenever they want it (although we are now in the midst of a rude awakening). Credit is a tool of self-actualization. It has no end. The credit rationale is that the life of abundance should be available to everyone no matter one’s station in life, or how hard he has worked, or how much self-discipline he has displayed. If instead we returned the national psyche to thrift instead of credit and consumption, we would have the real opportunity for community renewal, a prerequisite for the reinvigoration of our American Nation.

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There are many more aspects of the American Community that you may find in my previous writing or that I will elucidate more fully going forward.

The important things to remember are that MAGA should be MANA, the American Nation is a people, not a set of abstract ideas, and that there are well defined aspects of the American culture that we want to reinvigorate.

Thank you for reading. Let’s Make America a Nation again.