Ben Stein's comments in last week's Barrons (regarding 9/11/01 events, and America's "magical thinking" lately on a
lot of things (including the stock market)).
But first -- here is a "mini-biography" on Ben Stein from Internet Movie Database
imdb.com
Biography for Ben Stein
Height 5' 5"
Mini biography
Ben Stein (Benjamin J. Stein) was born on Nov. 25, 1944 in
Washington, D.C. The son of noted economist and writer
Herbert Stein, he grew up in Silver Spring, Md., and attended
Montgomery Blair High School. Some of his classmates
included journalist Carl Bernstein, and actors Goldie Hawn
and Sylvester Stallone. He graduated from Columbia
University in 1966 with honors in economics and as
valedictorian of the 1970 Yale Law School class. He has
worked as a poverty lawyer, a trial lawyer, a university
adjunct (American University, University of California at
Santa Cruz and Pepperdine University), a speech writer for
Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and a columnist
for The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Herald
Examiner, King Features Syndicate, Los Angeles Magazine,
New York Magazine, E! Online and The American Spectator.
He also writes frequently for The Washington Post. Stein has
written and published 16 books (seven novels, nine
nonfiction books), the most recent of which is about life
with his 12-year-old son, Tommy. He has been a longtime
screenwriter and was one of the creators of the TV series
Fernwood 2Night. He has acted and made guest appearances
in numerous movies and TV series, appears in many TV
commercials and is the host of two Comedy Central TV
series, "Win Ben Stein's Money" (October, 1997-present) and
"Turn Ben Stein On" (begins airing on Dec. 2, 1999). He is
married to entertainment-industry attorney Alexandra
Denman.
**********************************
SEPTEMBER 24, 2001
Wake Up, America!
It's time to end the childish -- and dangerous
-- daydreaming that's already proved costly
By BEN STEIN
There is a psychiatric disorder called "magical thinking" that includes the belief
that by following certain superstitions, or just by wishing, logically impossible
effects will follow. Magical thinking often involves also a general dreamlike,
childlike belief in omnipotence. Think of Rocky or any James Bond film or any
other feature-length cartoon, in which love conquers all, a superpowerful hero
saves the good people from all harm, and evil is always humbled by good, no
matter what the odds.
Or you might think of the sleepwalking, dreamy, head-in-the-sand way America
has approached the world for most of the past 20 years. As a nation, we have
been behaving like dreamy small children -- or very disordered adults.
Examples: Burying our heads in the sand about the oft-expressed and now
carried-out violent wishes of Arab terrorists to harm America. Walking away from
the prosecution of those who killed our servicemen in the Khobar Towers
bombings in Saudi Arabia. Letting Libya, which blew up Pan Am 103, suffer only
a bombing run on Qadafhi's tent and letting it make the almost comical excuse that
in a totalitarian state, two intelligence officers acted alone. Letting the terrorists
who blew up our Marines in Lebanon get off scot-free. Letting the people who
blew up the destroyer Cole and killed American sailors get away with it. Letting
the terrorists openly run training academies all over the Mideast for years, if not
generations. Letting graduates of those academies, allied with those who blew up
the Cole and the embassies, come to America to strike with even more deadly
force.
Other examples far closer to the daily lives of ordinary Americans: Believing that
the importance of money has been suspended. Imagining that companies without
any earnings or prospects for earnings can have valuations in the hundreds of
billions of dollars. Admiring companies with interesting names but no possibility of
returning any earnings to their shareholders. Thinking that all human and
investment history has been superseded by one invention and that all modes of
investment valuation hitherto are obsolete.
The magic box promotes magical thinking: Believing that men and women with
zero training in finance who happen to be in front of a camera know more than
persons who do have training and experience. Placing faith in such things as
"support levels" attached to irrelevant index numbers never seen by the persons
buying or selling individual stocks making up the indexes.
There is no comparison or connection between the incredible evil that brought us
the mass killings of last week and the phenomenon of the stock bubble of the past
several years. But there is a very direct connection between the extraordinary
magical thinking and the carelessness that led us as a nation to fall victim to both.
We simply stopped thinking logically or sensibly.
The same incompetent and childish thinking that makes us scream for Madonna or
present Gary Condit's infidelity as the story of the century or imagine we can
change our lives by gaining or losing a few pounds has led us to believe that real
life is a movie, and that magical endings will come along to save us all from the
monsters we imagine in our sleep.
Osama bin Laden and his pals in Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Afghanistan and Hollywood, Florida, have sent us a murderous wake-up call.
Sleepy-time is over now. Real life is back in session, we are in deep trouble, and
magical thinking is not going to help us.
We are in a position a lot like where we were in late 1941 and early 1942. The
enemy attacked us with a sneak attack that succeeded beyond our wildest
nightmare (although not beyond the enemy's wild dreams). We are reeling. But it
could be far worse. In 1941 and 1942, before we and our allies had turned
around, we faced the task of fighting over millions of square miles in Oceania,
Asia, Europe and North Africa, and breaking the dominion of evil over hundreds
of millions of lives. We faced an enemy incomparably more potent than Islamic
terrorists. We faced Germany and Japan, two hundred million capable, disciplined,
well-armed people with a strong desire to win and a willingness to die trying. (The
kamikazes were the single worst wartime enemy American sailors ever faced, and
an eerie precursor of the hijackers last week.) The enemy had a seemingly
unstoppable military machine. The Japanese had never lost a war, and Hitler
seemed invincible, even to some Americans.
Had America not awakened after Pearl Harbor, names like India, Britain and
Australia would have joined the names of captive places like France, Ukraine,
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Guinea, Saipan, Indochina
and Burma. And maybe America would have been on the list as well.
But we did wake up, and remade America into a model of vigilance, heroism,
productivity and daring. We didn't worry a lot about hurting anyone's feelings. We
didn't think all day about not hurting one single innocent person. We bombed their
cities from the air. We went from a tiny military to 12 million under arms in a
couple of years. We spent half the national product on defense and we restricted
some freedoms, maybe too many, but we won and saved the whole future of
mankind.
Now we must do that again. And the stakes are immense. No one doubts that an
enemy who will ram a plane whose passengers include sixth graders on a field trip
into a populated office building would use an atom bomb if they had it, or diseases
like anthrax or poison gasses like sarin.
What should be our response? We should not wait to respond. Bomb the places in
Iraq and Iran and anywhere else where they make these hideous weapons right
now, today, before terrorist cells or nations use them against us. We have enemies
out there who want to end this nation's existence. It's brutally serious but also
brutally plain. Strike hard and strike fast at the killers. We can sing "Kumbayah"
and "Give Peace a Chance" later.
We have to awaken within our borders, too. It is appalling, perhaps even criminal,
that the hijacker killers were on FBI watch lists, on lists of international terrorists
and still lived in plain view using their real names. The persons responsible for
these mammoth lapses at the FBI or the Immigration and Naturalization Service or
wherever should be fired, maybe even prosecuted for breach of duty. How will
anyone in this country ever know enough to be vigilant if someone can screw up
and let 5,000 people get killed -- and still keep his job?
The home front is the front line. We have to look for the enemy. We have to
report it if we see someone who talks about how much he hates America taking
pilot lessons. It's worth 10,000 false alarms to stop one plane or one dose of germ
warfare in New York's water supply. If some people's feelings are hurt, that's a
very small price to pay to save a nation.
We also have to do something similar in our own lives. We have been living in a
dream world about our investments. Just as it's our duty to guard our country, it's
our duty to guard our family's financial future. No more wishful thinking. Back to
reality, away from belief in the supernatural in stocks, Old Economy or New
Economy. Reversion to the mean is a law, not a choice. If you get there sooner
rather than later, you'll be safer.
A shrewd stock buy or a prudent sale is never comparable to defense against mass
murder in any sense. But there is much in common in the carelessness, dreamy
foolishness and magical thinking that allowed both stock-market bubbles and
immense gaps in our national defense.
If we can put this childishness behind us, if we can put aside childish things, if we
can grow up as fast as America did in the beginning of World War II, our future
is assured. We fight for the same cause -- human liberty and decency versus
merciless repression. We have to approach this conflict with the same spirit that
animated America after Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Corregidor.
Winston Churchill, who should be our inspiration, said after the U.S. entered the
war, "This is no time to speak of the hopes of the future ... We have to win that
war for our children. We have to win it by our sacrifices. We have not won it yet.
The crisis is upon us."
And so it is again.
BEN STEIN, a former speechwriter fo President Richard Nixon, is a TV personality,
lawyer and writer based in Los Angeles.
Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
