GREED IS GOOD...RIGHT?

Michael Douglas personified, for many, the idea of American free enterprise in the 1987 film hit "Wall Street." A sequel is in the making right now, but frankly I've already seen it...

I have this friend who does something in the financial markets. [Right there is cause for concern, for no one I know knows exactly what this "something" is; but then, lately we're learning not many people making money on Wall Street can explain exactly what they're doing there with other people's money]. In any case, my young rich friend personifies what young rich Americans often say America is all about.

I once asked him whether he agreed with H.L. Mencken who said, "If given a choice between liberty and safety, a man will always choose safety." As expected, he dismissed Mencken with: "The only way to be me is to let me be me; as for the rest, I'll take my chances!" Spoken like most free-wheeling heroes from Davey Crockett and Andrew Carnegie to Steve Jobs and, well, Michael Douglas.

My friend surfboards in Hawaii where I can picture him riding the big ones. And yet, if swamped, I can also picture him loudly calling the shore patrol for help. Just as he does the police when stranded on a highway or the medics in an ER or even his old-fashioned parents in old pensioned Florida when his last big roll of the dice busted.[ By the way, that last picture played out only two years ago].

His story is really an American archetype here on the bloody ideological field of battle between those economic warriors who say greed is what made America great...and those collective planners who say the European social safety net is what Americans now need in a global age of uncertainty.

Politicians, economists, pundits and street marchers all bring their own battle flags to this field. Capitalism vs Socialism...pay-as-you-go vs deficit-spending....Main Street vs Wall Street...Obama vs Palin. Through this daily din, I keep thinking how my young, free-wheeling friend stayed within the security of Mom and Pop's modest Florida home all those dead-broke months.

They played it safe with their dollars; he played it risky with millions. They found a cove of seashore safety in their lives; he's back in the game throwing Hail Mary passes again. It's looking at America from two different generations...from two different idologies....from two different personalty types. In the long run, though, there's only one fundamental life-choice available: You either put risk or welfare first!

In the European welfare states, they've made their choice. Here in a maturing America, we're in the process. It's far bigger than simply parties or pundits or politics. It's philosophies. It's how we believe life should be lived.