We let the pied piper lead us into the mess we're in

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What concerns me even more than the tragedies for 4,000 young Americans and their families, the scores of thousands maimed who must battle anew to obtain the follow-up care to which they are entitled, the millions of Iraqis who have been killed or injured or had their lives disrupted by the plunge by which Mr. Bush satisfied his ego — what concerns me even more is what happened to the financial standing of a once proud and prosperous country. We have not only gone to hell in a handbasket, we have gone broke without even trying to apply the brakes.

Instead of making even a small gesture toward paying what we have been spending, the president has urged tax cuts and further tax cuts favoring the wealthy. Instead of exhorting sacrifice in ways that would enable all families to feel they were bearing a share of the burden of the conflict he foisted upon us, he has urged us to show our patriotism by spending more on luxuries. Never do we hear the word "saving."

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Perhaps it is too easy to blame the president for the mess we’re in. He truly deserves the lion’s share of the blame, but the politicians we elected to Congress, and we ourselves, are also to blame. We have dealt with snake-oil salesmen in the past, but we have allowed this one to repeal the laws of economics by contending he has a mandate from the Almighty who assures him he is right. We might not have stopped him, but we could have mounted a louder protest.

So we have watched the dollar, that once magnificent symbol of confidence, slide down, down and down in value, down from near the British pound, past the Euro and momentarily past the Canadian dollar. Why? Fundamentally because we’ve been living far beyond our means, have made little apparent effort to overcome our huge deficits and are in hock more and more to China.

Some of our wealthy have become much richer in the process, but the wages of working people have stagnated or declined as the prices of energy and even food have zoomed upward. The recession is not experienced evenly in all sectors, but certainly we in the Tri-State corner have begun to feel its pinch and pull back. The country has not even begun to come to terms with the environmental degradation we have caused. Not a very rewarding legacy to leave our children or grandchildren who ultimately will have to pay the bill.

And what are we doing to prepare them? We subject them to all sorts of tests to make sure they are not left behind, but we immerse them in false values in which the glitz and instant entertainment of television, the Ipod and YouTube have displaced the hard work – and satisfaction – of good writing, history and even reading. We have encouraged a generation adept at pursuing the far reaches of the Internet but illiterate in terms of philosophy and meaning. We have allowed a fascination with technique to obscure the satisfaction of knowledge.

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Happily our country is still wonderful, a country still admired by even its purported foes for its achievements of government of the people and its ideals of racial equality and opportunity for all. But hard work will be required to recover its standing, not only in economic terms, but also in what it has lost in world respect because of its blithe repudiation of treaties, its sanction of torture, its abridgments of civil liberties and its obnoxious politicization of administration at all levels, including the courts.

Most of all, we need leaders and legislators who will tell us — and themselves — the truth in all its grimness and summon us to face its consequences at all levels. This is the time for John McCain to back off the sidetrack onto which he has seemed to have parked his Straight Talk Express. It is time for Hillary Clinton to offer some of the remedies for which she says her experience has prepared her. It is time for Barack Obama to propose practical suggestions for bringing us together as he so often has promised to do.

Plainly we need programs in readiness to provide employment in constructive national tasks of the sort undertaken by the Civilian Conservation Corps 75 years ago. We need to have public campaign financing, with the money now spent on lavish campaign TV ads diverted to an earnest bipartisan effort to bring health care to all, while cutting the unnecessary costs of our present spending. Most of all we need a renewal of national idealism in a way that will capture the enthusiasm of our young people and a dedication among their elders that will make it work.

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I didn’t think we could do it, but we sat through 5-1/4 hours of the Metropolitan Opera simulcast of "Tristan & Isolde" at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington Saturday afternoon. Magnificent performance, but it again proved the adage that the senses can’t absorb more than the seat can endure.