Crisis of Responsibility Read online

  Advance Praise for

  Crisis of Responsibility

  “David has hit home on the key point that must drive a new era of prosperity: with greater opportunity comes greater responsibility. The next generation of climbers in an aspirational society deserve a better shake from the establishment, but ultimately, they must embrace all challenges with a dogged determination. David’s book says no to the blame game, and yes to the triumph of the human spirit.”

  –ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, former White House Communications Director; Founder, SkyBridge Capital

  “There is a virtuous cycle between responsibility and prosperity, and David has tapped into this favorite message of Jack Kemp in a way we need today more than ever. The vicious cycle of deteriorating social structures and poverty can be replaced, and readers of this book will see the path forward for real growth—a virtuous, opportunity-oriented society.”

  –LARRY KUDLOW, Senior Contributor, CNBC

  “Only when the great mass of people reawaken to their civic duties will they be able to wrest control of America from an elite that has shown its failure to lead again and again. David Bahnsen’s new book is the first step along this important path.”

  –JONAH GOLDBERG, Senior Fellow and Contributor,

  National Review

  “David Bahnsen outlines cultural, economic, and political remedies for an ailing America of all classes. His often autobiographical message is that our fate still rests in our own hands. We are not pawns of global determinism, but with a few basic collective reforms and a return to individual self-reliance instead of our current self-obsessions, we can rebuild a prosperous, fair, and dynamic American culture and civilization. An outsider/insider message of hope and renewal that is now as rare as it is needed.”

  –VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institution,

  Stanford University

  “David Bahnsen has written a bracing and incisive critique of our increasingly pervasive culture of victimization. He makes a compelling case that it’s still within our power, and absolutely necessary, that we help ourselves. You will enjoy and profit from this book.”

  –RICH LOWRY, Editor in Chief, National Review

  “When will we put our fingers to better use than pointing them at each other or thrusting a middle one into the air? David Bahnsen shows us how to use our hands and brains to improve housing, education, labor markets, tax policy, and more.”

  –DR. MARVIN OLASKY, Editor in Chief, WORLD

  “In any debate, the one who controls the narrative wins the day, and David Bahnsen is about shifting the narrative on discussions related to doing well and good at the same time. Bahnsen has undertaken this herculean task in Crisis of Responsibility by combining his economic and financial acumen with his moral clarity in a manner that is neither didactic nor preachy. See if you don’t agree.”

  –FR. ROBERT SIRICO, President, the Acton Institute

  “We all look for paths for finances and economics to help us succeed and move ahead in life. David Bahnsen has targeted the best possible stance toward this, which is to take responsibility for one’s actions, starting at the individual level. He also provides a well-thought-out framework of specific suggestions to get this done. Highly recommended.”

  –DR. JOHN TOWNSEND, New York Times bestselling author;

  Founder of the Townsend Institute for Leadership and Counseling

  “The philosopher Johann Herder once defined culture as ‘the lifeblood of a people; the flow of moral energy that keeps a society intact.’ If that analysis is correct, then we can respond that our society has been definitively exsanguinated. For this reason, I am so glad David Bahnsen’s book has made its way to the public—for such a time as this. From Wall Street to Main Street and from tech to trade, Bahnsen diagnoses the fundamental problem that ails us and prescribes the only possible cure. He chronicles the decline of individual responsibility while simultaneously offering concrete proposals to bring it back to the nation.”

  –DR. GREGORY THORNBURY, President, King’s College

  “Markets are living moral creatures, as David Bahnsen notes. The world has been waiting for someone from finance to address the moral aspect of the 2008 crisis. Dave ‘Moral Hazard’ Bahnsen delivers it.”

  –AMITY SHLAES, Board Chair, Coolidge Presidential Foundation

  “In his thought-provoking, brilliant new book, David Bahnsen brings to light, in an easy to read style, the necessary components for building and maintaining a prosperous and moral society. Personal responsibility, opportunity, and limited government are cornerstones for success for all Americans. It is a must read.”

  –SALLY PIPES, President, Pacific Research Institute

  “Bahnsen has produced the quintessential counter-narrative to both the 2008 financial collapse and the 2016 presidential election. The theme of both individual and institutional responsibility was a major driving force behind the founding of our nation, and it was a guiding principle until at least halfway through the twentieth century. Its evaporation in recent decades has dramatically altered our culture. Bahnsen exposes this crisis and shows us the way out of it. I eagerly endorse this book, but I must say that the most telling endorsement is nothing I could say, but rather the author himself, whom I have known for twenty years as the epitome of individual responsibility. This man practices what he preaches. It is principally for this reason that I urge you to listen to his preaching: the more David Bahnsens that emerge, the fewer cultural crises we would suffer.”

  –P. ANDREW SANDLIN, Founder and President,

  Center for Cultural Leadership

  “Bahnsen brings rare assets to his treatment of the 2008 financial crisis. He has decades of first-hand experience in the financial industry, a keen understanding of economics, and a willingness to make fair but unpopular moral judgments. Together, these allow him to offer an account of the crisis that is both precise and comprehensive. The financial crisis is, in part, a tale of morality. But it’s not the cartoon morality tale that demonizes stereotypical villains and lets the rest of us off the hook. If we want to avoid a future crisis like the last one, we need to learn the lessons Bahnsen offers.”

  –JAY RICHARDS, Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute; Professor,

  Catholic University of America

  CRISIS OF RESPONSIBILITY

  A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

  Crisis of Responsibility

  Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It

  © 2018 by David L. Bahnsen

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-68261-625-3

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-626-0

  Cover Design by Tricia Principe, triciaprincipedesign.com

  Interior Design and Composition by Greg Johnson/Textbook Perfect

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Published in association with the literary agency of Legacy, LLC,

  501 N. Orlando Avenue, Suite #313-348, Winter Park, FL 32789.

  Post Hill Press

  New York • Nashville

  posthillpress.com

  Published in the United States of America

  For Joleen,

  who has kept me on the path of a virtuous life

  more than I deserve,

  and who joined me so many years ago

  on a lifetime journey where commitment and love

  have been blessings, not burdens,

  and where the rewards have been not just prosperous,

  but the stuff drea
ms are made of.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by David French

  Introduction: How This Book Became a Book

  1.Building Walls: A New Era

  2.Name Your Bogeyman: Wall Street, Washington, NAFTA, China, Mexico, and the Media

  3.Disintegrating Responsibility: The Social Foreshadowing to the Present Crisis

  4.Occupy Main Street: The Moral Confusion of Vindicating the Culprit

  5.The Robots Are Coming: What Free Trade and Automation Mean for the American Worker

  6.Pro-Business or Pro-Crony: Where Corruption Erodes Our Cultural DNA

  7.Empowerment Through Educational Choice: The Great Civil Rights Issue of Our Day

  8.Where Culture Trumps Green Card: Patriotism, Immigration, and Nationalism

  9.Higher Education’s Safe Spaces: Kerosene on the Crisis

  10.Government by the People, for the People: Why the Stunning Incompetence and Inefficiency of Big Government Is the People’s Problem

  11.The Responsibility Remedy: Ten Ways You Can Compete, Prepare, Defend, and Get Ahead

  12.The Cultural Remedy for Main Street: A Vision for a Free and Virtuous Society

  Endnotes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  My friend David Bahnsen’s book comes to us in a time of trouble. On August 12, 2017, a Nazi-sympathizing white supremacist rammed his car into a group of leftist protesters, killing one young woman and injuring nineteen. This hideous terrorist attack occurred after a night and day of so-called “alt-right” marches through the city of Charlottesville, Virginia—marches attended by hundreds of mostly young men who held aloft torches in the night and chanted about the “blood and soil” of white nationalism.

  This attack occurred not quite two months after an enraged supporter of Bernie Sanders walked onto a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, and opened fire on a collection of Republican congressmen who were practicing for an annual charity baseball game. It was only through good fortune and enormous personal courage that this one man didn’t kill a large percentage of GOP members of the House and Senate.

  The list of violent American political acts could roll on and on. Unquestionably, the nation is reaching a period of turmoil not seen since the bad days of the late 1960s and early 1970s. White supremacists have killed men in New York, Maryland, and Oregon. In Kansas, a man angry at immigrants opened fire on two people originally from India, killing one.

  Left-wing violence has surged—especially violence directed against police. From Dallas to Baton Rouge to New York City, police ambushes have claimed life after life, and anti-police riots have burned parts of Charlotte, Ferguson, and Baltimore. In places as far-flung and widely separated as Vermont, California, Oregon, Washington State, and Missouri, left-wing violence and threats of left-wing violence have rocked college campuses.

  It paints a bleak picture, but we’ve hardly begun to get bleak.

  Just as it feels that political violence is on the edge of spinning out of control, millions of Americans are suffering from an astounding—and deadly—level of personal malaise. Young children are enduring skyrocketing levels of anxiety and depression, and adults are dying due to “deaths of despair” at a stunning rate.

  Alcohol-related deaths are on the rise. Suicide rates are increasing. Opioid overdoses are at crisis levels. The level of self-inflicted harm is so great that for the first time in decades American life expectancy recently dropped. The United States is the most advanced nation in the world, with the highest level of insured citizens in its history, and the world leader in medical technology. Yet none of that has overcome the terrible power of despair.

  Is anyone surprised, then, that American political culture is disrupted? The American people have increasingly rejected the elites that they blame for financial disruption and eternal, seemingly unwinnable wars. In 2016, they chose a bombastic reality TV star with zero political experience to run the most powerful nation in the history of the earth, and they rolled the dice with him at a time of increasing world instability and danger. Donald Trump defeated the very picture of establishment politics in Hillary Clinton, but she survived her primary only after her elite party establishment had put its thumb on the scales. Arguably, had her party’s primary been as open and democratic as the GOP primary, the 2016 election would have featured an outsider Republican versus an avowed socialist Democrat.

  While periods of disruption and dislocation are inevitable, they always seem to take us by surprise. The status quo seems like it will endure, until the very moment that it doesn’t. And so it is with our modern challenge. We can’t go back to September 10, 2001, to the last day of a long peace. We can’t go back to the day before the financial crash, when countless millions of Americans thought that if they could believe in anything financial on this earth, they could at least believe in the value of their own home. Those times are gone. The question is now, to quote Christian thinker Francis Schaefer, “How should we then live?”

  The answer boils down to a choice: Build or burn. Embrace the spirit of the American Revolution—the spirit that has sustained this nation since its founding—or lurch toward the French Revolution, to destructive and vicious rage at failed elites. Make no mistake, the spirit of the French Revolution is in the air. GOP voters demanded that Trump “burn it all down.” Far-left rioters and all too many Black Lives Matter protesters have chosen to light literal fires in American streets. Even in the peaceful confines of social media and political debate, an “ends justifies the means” ethic has taken hold. Lies and vicious personal attacks are celebrated. Hatred of the other side trumps even regard for your own ideas. Winning justifies all manner of sins.

  But that’s antithetical to the ordered liberty envisioned by the founders of our country and demanded by our Constitution. Yes, our founders fought to overthrow a corrupt elite, but from the beginning they did so from within accountable institutions according to ancient rules of faith and morality. They fought to build, not ultimately to destroy, and they understood a core truth—“the Constitution of the United States was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

  This is the truth that David Bahnsen understands. This is the truth he brings to life. In other words, you can slay all your political dragons, but—at the end of the day—you are the person most responsible for the outcome of your own life. Yes, elites fail, but we also fail ourselves, and a nation that loses its sense of personal responsibility can cycle through leaders and political parties without ever soothing its rage or healing its wounds.

  In other words, there are wounds that public policy can’t heal, and there are injustices that no court can correct. At the same time, however, there exists hope greater than any president can bring, and a renewal awaits that needn’t depend on the competence of any politician. David’s book answers that crucial question: “What now?” And the answer, truly, isn’t found in our votes. It’s not found in our anger. It’s found when faithful men and women connect with a nation’s founding cultural and spiritual core, accept the responsibilities of citizenship, and live with confidence and courage. That is the path forward, that is the answer to our national crisis, and that is the lesson of David’s indispensable book.

  David French

  INTRODUCTION

  How This Book Became a Book

  September 2008—a watershed moment for our country and a watershed month for a lot of people. I am one of those people.

  The financial crisis became a significant moment in my life and career for a lot of obvious reasons. I run a wealth management business engaged in managing people’s money and financial affairs, a responsibility that intensifies significantly during moments of extraordinary distress. Living through the financial crisis and its attendant responsibilities with client capital, de
cision making, and good old-fashioned hand-holding was an intensely stressful experience for me, but also one that motivated me and provoked a strong sense of duty within.

  I happened to be a managing director at one of Wall Street’s largest investment banks at the time, so client anxieties comingled with company anxieties. With the very fate of the firm in question, transparency was understandably hard to come by. In addition, my wife and I had a three-year-old boy and a newborn baby girl at the time. Anxiety came from all directions—family, clients, company, and then, of course, from the actual crisis itself.

  On a macro level, I am skeptical that history will record the financial crisis correctly. Many people know that Lehman Brothers, the famed Wall Street bank, went bankrupt. Many know that significant government assistance got thrown around Wall Street in the aftermath. And many know that, somewhere in the middle of it all, a housing bubble burst. The aftermath of the crisis became immediately more newsworthy than the cause(s) of the crisis.

  America entered an economic recession in the fall of 2008 that surpassed any economic contraction we have suffered since the Great Depression. More than a 50 percent drop in the stock market, higher than 10 percent unemployment, the longest and deepest contraction of gross domestic product since the Depression, and housing foreclosures or mortgage defaults that transcended anything we have ever seen—the financial crisis of 2008 had all of it and touched everyone.

  I saw the crisis as the primary domestic news event of my adult lifetime. Because I was already deeply invested in it professionally and personally, I took on an intense study of the crisis in the years that followed. Even as the crisis lingered, the punditry class began analyzing and proposing various policy lessons and prescriptions. Indeed, the movement began prior to the eventual GDP recovery and the violent and shocking comeback of the stock market. From media figures to economists, financial analysts to politicians, actual stakeholders and policymakers during the crisis, a plethora of perspectives floated about in the years that followed regarding what happened, why it happened, and what it all meant.