Back to Bedrock: George W. Bush vs. Fred Flintstone.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Rant - Brief Article - Editorial

WHOSE MIND DIDN'T get to wandering during George W. Bush's second State of the Union address, the "great speech" (as many commentators dubbed it minutes after its finish) that has already become a vague, did-it-really-happen TV event, the political equivalent of the sans-Bobby Ewing season of Dallas?

But who could have anticipated that the president's remarks would have called to mind that great, prehistoric proto-American, Fred Flintstone? Between denouncing his low-rent Axis of Evil and stumping for one of the largest federal spending increases in recent memory, the presidet made an assertion about the American character that called to mind Bedrock's best-known resident--and left one wondering whether Bush really has his finger on the pulse of the common folk, as his supporters routinely claim.

"For too long, our culture has said, 'If it feels good, do it.' Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: 'Let's roll,'" said Bush, invoking the phrase uttered by Todd Beamer as he and other passengers bravely attacked the hijackers of United Flight 93. "we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self." Most important, said the millionaire president who waited out the Vietnam War in the Texas Air National Guard, "We began to think less of the goods we can accumulate, and more about the good we can do."

Forget for the moment that virtually all indicators of social decline at which conservative Republicans traditionally wag an accusatory finger have been improving for close to a decade now--a simple reality that completely undercuts Bush's cultural decline argumet. Focus instead on the implications of the president's call to voluntary simplicity.

In suggesting a contradiction between buying stuff and being good--between a "culture of accumulation," as it were, and a "culture of responsibility"--Bush updated Max Weber's 100-year-old case that a capitalist society is necessarily based on restraining impulses rather than giving in to them. In fact, Bush seemed to be reading pages written by our most prominent neo-Weberian, Daniel Bell. In 1996, Bell lamented, our "culture [was] no longer concerned with how to work and...