The Deadliness of Certainty

No misery. No Sistine Chapel.

So what happens to the creative spirit when government steps in to soothe our anxieties? Without unhappiness, what happens to culture? Without adversity, what happens to motivation? Parents know. Suffice to say, the work ethic is not strong among the coddled.

Most important, with all needs met, what happens to freedom -- that human recoil against imposed order?

When Rahm Emanuel said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," he wasn't the first or the last to express the sentiment. George W. Bush was accused of taking advantage of Americans' post-Sept. 11 terror to expand executive power. Barack Obama will be remembered for creating budget-busting social programs while Americans were caught in the headlights of unemployment and economic reversal.

The citizen's fear is the politician's elixir.

Certainty may be the promise of government, but uncertainty is the grease of free markets. Uncertainty was also America's midwife. Without a tolerance for uncertainty -- and unhappiness -- our nation's Founders might have remained in their rockers.

Previous generations understood that life is a gamble of uncertain returns. They were sometimes sad because life is sometimes sad. They were good at coping in bad times because downturns were more familiar than upticks.

Today, we apparently trade liberty for certainty and our once-swashbuckling spirit for contentment, preferably in pill form. All we need is a nice aphorism to help the medicine go down. Here's one beloved by conservatives to get things rolling: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."

Happy now?

kparker@kparker.com