“No nation on earth has ever tried as hard, and failed as utterly, in its effort not to become rich as America has. From the start our great leaders tried to steer us away from the pitfalls of great wealth. Thomas Jefferson campaigned against manufacturing and commerce, fearing we would become a nation of ‘gamblers’ and ‘jugglers’ who spent their lives performing ‘tricks with paper.’” John Adams was convinced that big money would lead to our downfall. “Human nature, in no form of it, could ever bear prosperity.” So begins David Brooks’ essay, “Why the U.S. Will Always be Rich,” published in 2002.

The New York Times columnist knows how to get our attention. With this opening salvo he declares the irrelevance of a tradition that was already deeply set in American life by the time the generation of the Founders came along. Brooks ends his essay by announcing that not only were Jefferson and Adams wrong but that the current crop of anti-materialists have missed the point. “The gurus of the simple life are wrong. The noblest, most creative and fullest life is not to be found by the backwaters of Walden Pond but in the rushing mainstream of life, in the office parks and the malls and the Times Squares twinkling with lights, screens and money.” 

The sub-title of Brooks’ essay captures the thrust of his argument. “In America, money is promiscuous. Money is ubiquitous. But most of all, money is virtuous.” It may strike you as strange that anyone would speak of money as “virtuous.” “Promiscuous”? Well, maybe in the hands of some persons. “Ubiquitous”? Sure. But what does it mean to claim “money is virtuous?” It violates the conventions of American speech.

And that is precisely what Brooks intends to do. “Money in America has been transformed into abundance.  . . . And this environment of abundance comes with its own psychology, morality, sins and virtues. It does not create the old corrupting patterns described by the philosophers.”

There is, therefore, little need to worry about the problems so frequently mentioned on this website. Here are our guesses about how David Brooks might respond to the questions posed in A Place to Begin 3.0 (How do we understand the struggles over giving within us?), or A Place to Begin 3.2 (So what is the root of our problem?).

“Money anxiety”? A neurotic tic, a needless burden inherited from the past. The tyranny of “more”? It’s not a tyrannical force, but a gift of life in the ever expanding “environment of abundance.” Why do we insist upon invoking heavy-handed moralistic warnings about “greed,” “avarice” etc.? Don’t we miss the larger point made so well decades ago by the Spanish-born American philosopher, George Santayana? “The American talks about money because this is the symbol and measure he has at hand for success, intelligence and power; but as to money itself he makes, loses, spends and gives it away with a very light heart.”

A “very light heart?” Is that your reading of the way we Americans, past and present, make, lose, spend and give away our money?