George Rebane
Today we observe Cristofo’s grand achievement in 1492 that started the European conquest of the Americas – the Vikings blew their attempt about 500 years earlier. This national holiday is specifically eschewed in Hawaii, Nevada, and, of course, California. Nevertheless, I was reminded by a reader that RR would be remiss in not taking note of this auspicious beginning.
Actually, on this day I want to commend Queen Isabella of Spain for launching the three ships. It was her investment that made the Italian’s trip possible, being the first among his countrymen to arrive in this hemisphere ‘without papers’, thereby establishing the denigrating ethnic label to a generation and more Italians who followed him 400 years later. But that’s another story.
Here I wish to draw your attention to one of the most momentous of all government investments – and it truly was an investment, totally unlike the spending programs of today – to find a shorter route to India, since Portugal ruled the long route around Africa to trade with that fabled land.
So anyway, Columbus sailed bravely onto an ocean that many thought would come to an abrupt end at the edge of the world as depicted in many woodcuts of the time. After a long voyage he blundered into a new hemisphere instead, while still believing that he had landed on some outer archipelago of Asia. But then who knew. The map he got from his subscription to the National Geographic of the day was drawn by some clown named Toscanelli who should have opened a restaurant instead.
Later voyages by true Spaniards – they got the WOP out of the way, and even prosecuted him for some financial shenanigans – confirmed that this was a new world, and that it contained riches beyond their wildest dreams as soon as they could get rid of some pesky Indians.
After the peskier Indians were dispatched, the remainder were put to work digging out and hauling in unimaginable amounts of gold that was then shipped off to Spain. Some of it got nailed by hurricanes and pirates, which again is another story. But here I’d like emphasize what the Spanish government did with their windfall.
The first thing they did was to establish a behavior that has come to be known as ‘spending money like drunken sailors’, which is exactly what they did for the next three centuries. (This part of California's Spanish heritage is still practiced in Sacramento.) Who needed to work when all that gold was coming in? It was all eat, drink, and make Mary, or merry, or was it war? The bottom line is that like all governments, Spain spent itself silly for 300 years until the gold shipments stopped, mostly through the efforts of Spain’s European neighbors like the French and the English, whom the profligate Spaniards had managed to piss off to a fair thee well with successive attacks, wars, and other sundry intrigues.
In the 19th century Spain was broke, and through revolution and competitive imperialism it managed to lose all the possessions in the New World it had discovered. America, flexing newly found international muscles, put a bow on the whole sordid affair in 1898 with the foisted Spanish-American War in which Spain lost its remaining overseas possessions – we got Cuba and the Philippines, and some other sundry real estate. And Spain was reduced to making sangria for tourists, and muttering something about their shoulda, coulda, wouldas.
By the way, Spain learned nothing from its centuries long government spending. In the 20th century Spaniards gave various forms of socialism a try, settling finally on what we today know as the European model. This got them into policies that called for even more ‘investments’ in things like green energy, public employee pensions, 25% unemployment, and a national debt up to their collective interglutial cleft.
So happy Columbus Day, and the next time you hear someone from Washington talk about government investments, consider the sad tale of España. Ole!
Today we observe Cristofo’s grand achievement in 1492 that started the European conquest of the Americas – the Vikings blew their attempt about 500 years earlier. This national holiday is specifically eschewed in Hawaii, Nevada, and, of course, California. Nevertheless, I was reminded by a reader that RR would be remiss in not taking note of this auspicious beginning.
Actually, on this day I want to commend Queen Isabella of Spain for launching the three ships. It was her investment that made the Italian’s trip possible, being the first among his countrymen to arrive in this hemisphere ‘without papers’, thereby establishing the denigrating ethnic label to a generation and more Italians who followed him 400 years later. But that’s another story.
Here I wish to draw your attention to one of the most momentous of all government investments – and it truly was an investment, totally unlike the spending programs of today – to find a shorter route to India, since Portugal ruled the long route around Africa to trade with that fabled land.
So anyway, Columbus sailed bravely onto an ocean that many thought would come to an abrupt end at the edge of the world as depicted in many woodcuts of the time. After a long voyage he blundered into a new hemisphere instead, while still believing that he had landed on some outer archipelago of Asia. But then who knew. The map he got from his subscription to the National Geographic of the day was drawn by some clown named Toscanelli who should have opened a restaurant instead.
Later voyages by true Spaniards – they got the WOP out of the way, and even prosecuted him for some financial shenanigans – confirmed that this was a new world, and that it contained riches beyond their wildest dreams as soon as they could get rid of some pesky Indians.
After the peskier Indians were dispatched, the remainder were put to work digging out and hauling in unimaginable amounts of gold that was then shipped off to Spain. Some of it got nailed by hurricanes and pirates, which again is another story. But here I’d like emphasize what the Spanish government did with their windfall.
The first thing they did was to establish a behavior that has come to be known as ‘spending money like drunken sailors’, which is exactly what they did for the next three centuries. (This part of California's Spanish heritage is still practiced in Sacramento.) Who needed to work when all that gold was coming in? It was all eat, drink, and make Mary, or merry, or was it war? The bottom line is that like all governments, Spain spent itself silly for 300 years until the gold shipments stopped, mostly through the efforts of Spain’s European neighbors like the French and the English, whom the profligate Spaniards had managed to piss off to a fair thee well with successive attacks, wars, and other sundry intrigues.
In the 19th century Spain was broke, and through revolution and competitive imperialism it managed to lose all the possessions in the New World it had discovered. America, flexing newly found international muscles, put a bow on the whole sordid affair in 1898 with the foisted Spanish-American War in which Spain lost its remaining overseas possessions – we got Cuba and the Philippines, and some other sundry real estate. And Spain was reduced to making sangria for tourists, and muttering something about their shoulda, coulda, wouldas.
By the way, Spain learned nothing from its centuries long government spending. In the 20th century Spaniards gave various forms of socialism a try, settling finally on what we today know as the European model. This got them into policies that called for even more ‘investments’ in things like green energy, public employee pensions, 25% unemployment, and a national debt up to their collective interglutial cleft.
So happy Columbus Day, and the next time you hear someone from Washington talk about government investments, consider the sad tale of España. Ole!
‘They Can’t Take That Away from Me’ – 2013 style
George Rebane
[I'm not sure that much of this is comprehensible to younger generations, but many of us older people do hearken back to some grand years in the good old US of A. Granted, time has worn off some of the rough edges. Nevertheless, here're some ramblings to mark another milestone that we pass in an age that is so different from the America of days gone by.]
But best of all, most of us were free and working to bring such freedoms to all. The beguiling bamboozle of 1930s socialism cum communism, that so enthralled America’s leftwing elite during the Depression, finally showed its true face as the Iron Curtain divided Europe into the history’s largest prison camp on one side, and thriving nations reaching new levels of prosperity and quality of life on the other side. In schools we learned about American exceptionalism and then lived it as we hit the streets when school let out.
For those of us born in the 1940s, it’s already in the bank, and no one can take it away. We have been blessed to live in the iconic America that reached its apex during the 1945 – 1965 period. It was an age when America was the world’s white knight, having emerged victorious from vanquishing two global foes, then pouring its enormous wealth and productive capability into rebuilding a shattered world, and setting itself to stand guard against the surviving evil of communism. We had a common public culture, boundless energy, and a pragmatic vision of how we would continue to make ours a more perfect Union.
We were also free to work our butts off. As kids we could get about any job we could talk ourselves into. We flipped burgers, carried papers, mowed lawns, or even worked as field hands doing stoop labor on farms. As we got older we could get jobs using the skills we learned in high school shop classes. My own jobs path was going from a farm laborer into aerospace light manufacturing as a sixteen year old cutting and brazing jet engine electrical conduits. My next stop was an aerospace draftsman drawing awesomely complex functional diagrams of submarine combat systems as a teenager in college.
There was no government to tell employers that they could not hire me, and no government telling me I could not work here or there, or taking my parents to task for ‘abusing’ me if I decided to work long hours months at a time. In fact, I bought my first car, a used 1957 VW bug. After arriving in Los Angeles, I registered with the California Youth Employment Agency in Hollywood. They sent me on called-in daily jobs located from Orange County to the canyon country north of Los Angeles. I did whatever my boss for a day (or more) would tell me to do, whether it would be to wash windows, clean out the garage, rake leaves, polish floors, or paint a porch. America’s youth was then enabled by the state, not inhibited.
And fearing government was something we learned about in school and saw in other countries, but none of us experienced government overreach in our own or our parents’ lives. We could go where we wanted and do what we wanted (within reason of course). Public lands were then truly public lands. We could throw a backpack and gun (it had to be visible) into the back seat, and before the sun set we’d be in a very remote spot sitting around a campfire with a dubiously cooked meal warming our bellies.
Our entertainments were salutary to God and country. Coming out of a movie – whether a grand western, a biblical epic, filmed version of a Broadway musical, war story, or comedy – you invariably felt uplifted. Hollywood was on the case, giving us a gratifying respite from our daily labors which were many. And television echoed all that during its ‘golden age’, those shows whose recorded kinescopes are still entertaining and somewhat unbelievable to the current generations.
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