Recall Grover Cleveland's warning on fiscal discipline and national character

In the final paragraphs of his June 1901 Saturday Evening Post article, Cleveland admonished his fellow Americans. With these words, he urged them to muster the character to resist being bribed with their own money:

The lessons of extravagance and paternalism must be unlearned; economy and frugality must be reinstated; and the people must exact from their representatives a watchful care for the general welfare and a stern resistance to the demands of selfish interests, if our Government is to be an enduring and beneficent protection to a patriotic and virtuous people.

Many Americans today would undoubtedly dismiss Cleveland’s warnings as “quaint” and “old-fashioned.” They want the government to give them stuff and they don’t think much about who will pay for it. They think even less about how it corrupts the national character.

Cleveland would likely conclude that this is distressing evidence that the national character has already been deeply corrupted. And in that, I believe he would be precisely and disturbingly correct. The question each of us should ask ourselves is, “Am I part of the problem or part of the solution?”