A Lemur's Lesson
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The other night, Mandy wanted me to tell her a bedtime story. She likes stories about animals, so the story I made up goes like this: Three lemurs were hanging out in the doctor's office. Lemurs don't drive fancy sports cars and it's pretty hard to have a jacuzzi in your home when you live in a tree, so in lemur society your status is all about your tail, how long and fancy it is.
The youngest lemur happened to have the shortest tail, but he also had the biggest smile on his face, and he kept looking at the faces of the other two lemurs trying to figure out why they looked so troubled. The lemur in the middle was somewhat older, and he was thinking about his wife and kids with a furrowed brow.
The oldest lemur had a very long tail, and he held onto it like he might lose it if he let go. He looked quite sad and even appeared to be in pain. When the lemur doctor burst into the room, he called the oldest lemur into his office first.
"Siggy," said the Doctor as he began the exam, "you were just in here last week."
"I think I broke my tail again, Doctor. It really hurts. I thought I saw a Fossa yesterday and I fell out of a tree trying to get away from it." The doctor smiled. Siggy loved to tell tall tales about his misfortunes. "Okay, I was sitting in a grove of trees eating berries and I wasn't paying attention. About eight of my grandchildren were playing and ran over my tail." The Doctor took hold of Siggy's tail, running it between his practiced lemur fingers to examine it for fractures and torn ligaments. Siggy seemed to wince every 3 inches.
"Such a beautiful long tail!" said the doctor, clucking, "but you have been so rough on it. What I don't understand is, you keep getting the same sorts of injuries over and over again, apparently due to your own indifference and neglect."
"Well, that's part of the problem, Doctor," said Siggy. "It's such a long tail that I lose track of it. I go on about my business each day and forget where I've put it."
"We could put your tail in a cast, but that might make things considerably worse for you if a Fossa actually did come along," said the Doctor. "So I'm going to give you some advice instead that I want you to take to heart." And he said:
Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
The words of Edmund Burke (1729-1797) have been applied to costly defeats associated with repeated invasions of places like Russia and Afghanistan, but they are also relevant to the current economic crisis which resembles the Great Depression of roughly 80 years ago. The good news is that by recognizing the similarities in the diagnoses, we as a nation can return to the principles that made us well and whole again.
Mandy is studying FDR's 1st Inaugural Address of 1933. Some of the nefarious characters our President of that era referred to resemble the financiers of modern times, from Michael Milken to the ENRON guys to Bernie Madoff.
Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.
FDR believed in The Constitution, regulation of financial markets, redistribution of resources, organizing and investing in social programs while reducing bureaucratic overhead, personal responsibility and cooperation, and he wasn't afraid to say so. In the speech he gave the day he assumed public office, he enumerated and explained in detail many of the solutions which healed our country then and would likewise benefit us today were they put into practice.
Mandy and I think that if Siggy went to the lemur library and got hold of FDR's speech, he might not have to walk around with a tail that's broken in 30 places, but he could set an example for younger lemurs and begin to enjoy the status that goes with having one of the longest lasting Democracies in the world today.
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