Are You Staying Awake at Night?

The President said in a recent interview that he spends most of his study time reading briefing papers and scanning newspapers. Television news and political bloggers are not very high on his must-do list. Defenders of the written word will heartily approve. However, the younger generations continue their rush toward the electronic word. A trend or a tragedy...?

Among those studies quantifying this rush is one from Germany which reports a startling 84% of 20-year-olds would rather do without their significant other than without their Internet. One has to wonder what this might mean for future ind-ices of marriage and birth rates, not to mention IQ scores. One thing's sure, though, today's electronic words are contributing to the sleeplessness of 46% of the American population. That's right. Surveys by the National Sleep Foundation report that this 24/7 electronic news of the sinking economy is keeping millions awake at night.

Staying awake is one thing. Doing the right thing while you're awake is quite another. Which brings us to yet another set of statistics. In Gainesville, Florida a traffic officer wrote a record-number seven parking tickets for a new BMW which had been illegally parked for more than two weeks. A curious neighbor finally called the police about the nuisance. When they checked the car, they found a two-week-old dead body in the back seat.

One may tally up all these different numbers and draw whatever conclusion they wish. Here's mine. When the times are hard, the news is bad, and sleep doesn't come easy, maybe it's time to use our waking hours to wake up to the fact that things aren't always what they seem. What's in the back seat of our current problems may actually be a death of sorts. The death of our traditional way of operating that maybe we've taken for granted far too long.

And so it is that many socio-economic observers today are projecting not only future corrections in our way of of operating, but largescale future re-structuring of that way. When Teddy Roosevelt headed in that direction he was called "that damn cowboy." When FDR's New Deal did, he was called "a socialist betraying his own class." When LBJ's Great Society did, he was accused of being "the great meddler."

Today's critics of big government restructuring point to our country's proud 19th century tradition of unregulated free enterprise. And they have a good argument. So does W. Somerset Maugham when he wrote, "Tradition is a guide, not a jailer." Thus the great debate in Washington has begun. Whether it's the written or the electronic word keeping us up at night, those of us who sent these guys there better pay our best attention.