Usgovernmentspendingcom The Story - Road to the Middle Class

Anyone who reads the postmodernists knows that. It’s all in the narrative, they write, the narrative of power. Every powerful elite tells its story in a Narrative that cunningly obscures the real story of its rise to power using piracy and plunder.

Of course, the concept of the Narrative is just the cunning apology for their own Postmodernist Narrative, which is that they, the lefty postmodernists, are uniquely endowed with the right to exercise power on behalf of the oppressed and the powerless because they care about the oppressed and the marginalized. And that makes them different, pal, and don’t you forget it or they will use their power to shut you up.

Nevertheless, as we learn from non-postmodernists like Frederick Turner, one of our RMC Chappies, narrative is important. Narrative is the way we remember and understand the past, our origin, and the meaning of our lives. The most powerful form of narrative is the myth, usually told in verse and in song, because rhyming and singing are universal aids to memory. On top of that, they are fun.

Well, we’re not going to present usgovernmentspending.com in verse, but we can certainly tell the story of government spending in the United States in the last century. Because we’ve got the numbers.

So here it is: the first draft of usgovernmentspending.com. The Story, “Once Upon a Time in America.” Enjoy.

There’s one thing you need to know if you want to understand usgovernmentspending.com, and it is this:

It’s More Than the Numbers.

At usgovernmentspending.com you’ll find numbers coming out the wazoo. But it is the presentation, the access to the data, formerly hidden away in dusty government vaults, that makes usgovernmentspending.com what it is.

OK. I know. The US Census Bureau has all its stuff up online, not hidden away in a dusty government vault. We love the Census Bureau at usgovernmentspending.com. It’s just that usgovernmentspending.com is More than the Numbers. And it shows.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: Jonathan Gardner on 04/21/09 3:47pm

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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