CapitalistMarks

Observations.

Posted on 11. Apr, 2010 by scott in general musings

Watching the Masters golf tourney today makes me wonder where all the nuts come from.  Does someone pay a few guys to follow the leaders around and shout ‘in the hole!’ after every shot.  Even  a drive from 500 yards away (for the uninitiated an impossible shot)?

I can’t imagine any other reason for it.

Man, aren’t we great though?

A nation that allows all sorts of behavior in public (dare I admit that sometimes we even encourage it?), all kids of crazy dress (my opinion — but then who am I to judge styles?), all kinds of religious belief (without judging for the most part — a special caveat here for Tom Cruise), all kinds of decorating on automobiles that drive our highways (remember the fur covered ‘dogmobile?), shoes that make you wonder why we ever invented the dern things . . .  and on and on.

But, we are also a nation that forgives a guy like Tiger Woods who egregiously violated marriage oaths and common sense.  The crowd at the Masters has followed him loyally and encouragingly — well he did offer a genuine (it seemed to me) apology before the competition started.

At the same time we welcome a new Masters hero (for this year)  and applaud the success of Phil Mickelson, because he is a great golfer (the best this day) and a dad who loves his wife and family so much they spent the week there with him.

Yep, we can appreciate at the same time that we forgive.

And that is a good thing.

We forgave the Germans for WWII (thank heavens since I married one), and the Japanese for the same war ( thanks for the Toyatas and Hondas that I have bought over the years and continue to drive).

And we will forgive the Iraqies and the Afghans if we can ever finish our wars there and let them prove to the world how great their culture is.

In fact this propensity to forgive is one of the greatest things about our country . . . we are so varied and diverse that we find it easy to forgive just about anyone and any nation for just about anything.  Pretty quick too.

Each time we do it the world opens up, gets more forgiving, allows greater acceptance and follows our example.

In short the whole dang place gets better.

I hope, and believe,  that we will never change.  Good thing too.

Just a year ago the world (well at least the Chinese and Russians — I don’t count Iran, Venezuela or Cuba) were yelling that the American Economic model of free-market capitalism was dead.  Boy were they ever wrong.  Our system works and worked — adjustments were made, changes were accepted and now we are on another tear that I hope will soon employ everyone that really wants a job (another neighbor got off unemployment this week!).

Man aren’t we great?

Your darn tootin’ we are!!

thanks to flickr’s johntraynor for the photo

Tags: afghanistan, china, free-market capitalism, Iran, Iraq, masters golf, phil mickelson, Russia, tiger woods, venezueala