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VDH - Coronavirus and Fear - Lessons from WW II
[Fox News] Seventy-five years ago this month, Germany surrendered, ending the European theater of World War II. At the war’s beginning, no one believed Germany would utterly collapse in May 1945.On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, German invaders were on the verge of capturing Moscow. Britain was isolated. London had barely survived a terrible German bombing during the blitz. A sleeping America was neutral, but it was beginning to realize it was weak and mostly unarmed in a scary world. But how did the U.S. arm so quickly, build such effective weapons so soon, and from almost nothing field a military some 12 million strong? Neo-socialist President Franklin D. Roosevelt unleashed American business under the aegis of successful entrepreneurs such as Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Co., William Knudsen of General Motors, Henry Kaiser of Kaiser Shipyards and Charles Wilson of General Electric. They were all given relatively free rein from New Deal strictures to work and profit without burdensome government regulations. The result was a military juggernaut that overwhelmed America’s enemies. The media turned from either propagandizing the success of the New Deal or hyping its failures to warning Americans of the looming existential threat that would soon make their differences irrelevant. Most importantly, Americans lost their fears. Does World War II offer any lessons regarding our wrecked economy and staggering unemployment from the lockdown reaction to the coronavirus? Perhaps. Government cannot restore prosperity. Only entrepreneurs and risk-takers can. Americans must master their fears of the virus and dare to go back to work. Otherwise, locked-down states will continue to borrow to pay out public assistance without creating wealth from labor, production and investment. Bankrupt states will beg the federal government to print money that it doesn’t have for bailouts to pay those who are not working and not creating collective wealth. The media must stick to reporting on the virus and the ailing economy. Their often petty obsessions with destroying President Trump are long past monotonous. Posted by: Bobby 2020-05-17 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=571761 |