Elizabeth Warren Explodes Self-Made Myth

The self-made man: a total myth!

Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has the rightwing blogosphere quaking in anger (or is it in their hypocritical boots?) for a viral video in which she took a butcher knife to one of the most overfed sacred cows in American history: the Myth of the Self-Made Man. She rightly parsed the considerable difference between self-made and self-serving.

In case you missed it Warren said, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory….Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

I jumped for joy when I heard this if, for no other reason, I’ve been saying this for years. The Loony Right has, of course, accused her of fomenting “class warfare,” an absurd charge she preemptively addresses. Elizabeth Warren isn’t suggesting socialism, folks; she has something far less radical in mind: social contract. Or maybe it’s Biblical. Republicans love to wrap themselves in Scripture, but do any of today’s “faith-based” moralists bother to read Luke 12:28: “Everyone to whom much is given, of him much will be required….” The last politician I recall using this line was John F. Kennedy, and doesn’t that speak volumes about the erosion of the civic ideal in America? There’s class warfare going on, but it’s the war of the rich on the rest. Think I’m exaggerating? Explain to me why it’s a radical idea to eliminate a tax break for Americans making over $200,000 but perfectly okay to allow one to expire that affects only those making under $75,000.

Spare me the pious pronouncements (read unadulterated bullshit) about “job creators,” “rising boats,” and “investment capital.” These are lies we’ve been repeating since the Reagan Rhetorical Revolution of the 1980s. Warren got it right—all job creation depends on a favorable business climate that occurs when social capital intersects with investment capital. Do you think, for example, that the New York Yankees decided to build their new stadium in the bucolic Bronx out of the goodness of their owners’ hearts? Or did a billion dollars of city (and taxpayer- supported) infrastructure improvements and revenue enhancements have something to do with it?

Do people rise from adversity and dramatically improve their lives? Of course they do. I’ve done it myself (though let’s say that the under $75k tax break interests me more than the over $200k). Did I do it entirely on my own? No way. I am a product of sweat equity, but also of public schools, aid to poor families, federal educational grants, taxpayer-supported payrolls, insured mortgage programs, and government funding schemes that allow me to travel to jobs on public roads and burn cheap gasoline. (Take away federal trade policies on petrol and let me know how much driving you can afford!)

The self-made man myth is a misunderstood and pernicious threat to American society. The term has been around since the 17^th century, but its original meaning implied a person enterprising enough to take advantage of society’s opportunities (even if they came in the form of access to free land). Henry Clay is the person who began to bend the meaning toward crass (and mythical) individualism. In an 1832 speech before Congress Clay bragged that in Kentucky, “almost every manufactory known to me is in the hands of enterprising and self-made men who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor.” He said it, but he didn’t believe it. The legislative effort for which Clay was best known? He was devoted to a scheme dubbed the “American System,” a call for public dole money to support building canals, carving out new roads, funding the Bank of the United States, assuming state debts, and improving national defense. He also wanted high protective tariffs. In other words, his “self-made men” wanted someone else to pay for their transportation systems, underwrite their loans, guarantee their physical safety, and protect them from competition. Clay called this the American System, but stripped of the sound bite it’s called “federalism.”

So again I say, hurrah for Elizabeth Warren! At last! A Democrat for whom I can cast a vote without a clothespin on my nose! To those who actually still believe in the hoary old self-made myth I say: build your own damn roads, independently fund your own projects, use your Second Amendment right to protect yourself, and do not come crying to Uncle Sam for bailouts if disasters strike or a future Bernie Madoff runs off with your self-made gold.