Sacrifice

As a historian, I come across some interesting articles from time to time. This one today rang especially true.

Our society as a whole is so well off, so lazy, and so unaffected by the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan; and it's a night and day difference to how the country as a whole was organized during WWII.

When the United States entered World War II, the whole nation became committed to the war effort. "Victory gardens" and "Rosie the Riveter" were all the rage. Scrap drives and blackouts were part of life on the homefront.

Where's Rosy the Riveter today? What about victory gardens? While we do have blackouts today, they are not the result of rationing, but rather the end result of 40 years of bad energy policy. (Making fun of the eco-movement will be the topic on another day...)

However, rationing was the largest contributor to the war effort, by evenly distributing goods and reining in prices. A nation already used to doing without during the Great Depression continued to do so, despite a dramatic increase in buying power.

Can you imagine anyone in this country going without anything?? Thanks to the boomer generation and their ME ME ME mentality, we haven't (as a nation) done without in quite some time.

Imagine, if you will, if rationing were in effect today.

Tires were the first item to be rationed, in January 1942. Quickly following were passenger automobiles, typewriters, sugar, gasoline, bicycles, footwear, fuel oil, coffee, stoves, shoes, meat, lard, shortening and oils, cheese, butter, margarine, processed foods (canned, bottled and frozen), dried fruits, canned milk, firewood and coal, jams, jellies and fruit butter, by November 1943.

We are so fat and ignorant as a nation that it's hard to believe that the WWII generation were our fathers and grandfathers.

America needs to wake the hell up.