"Can We Afford Liberalism Now"

Historian Paul Johnson writes about the financial crisis at Forbes:

"The financial crisis, detonated by greed and recklessness on Wall Street and in the City of London, is for the West a deep, self-inflicted wound." 

"...If we seriously wish to repair the damage, we need to accept that this is fundamentally a moral crisis, not a financial one. It is the product of the self-indulgence and complacency born of our ultraliberal societies, which have substituted such pseudo-religions as political correctness and saving the planet for genuine distinctions between right and wrong and the cultivation of real virtues."

 "India and China are progress-loving yet morally old-fashioned societies. They cannot afford liberalism. Their vast populations have only recently begun to emerge from subsistence living. Their strength is in the close, hard-working family unit in which parents train their children to work diligently at school and go to university when possible so they can acquire real and useful qualifications to then go out into the world as professional men and women determined to reach the top."

"....We are traveling along the high road to incompetence and poverty, led by a farcical coalition of fashionably liberal academics on the make, assorted eco-crackpots and media wiseacres"

Hat tip to Jill at The Business of Life, who points to two other articles about the day of reckoning coming soon for Baby Boomers with their profligate ways.

Anecdotal evidence about the supposed recession we're in:  My husband and I were shopping this afternoon at two different malls in Nashua, New Hampshire.  Both malls were packed, driving lots were full, we were stuck in traffic trying to get back home.  I keep hearing on the news that consumer spending is way down, but it doesn't look that way to me.  It looks more like Christmas shopping has started already.