December 31, 1999

Time: By now it's either all over or has begun a new, artificial, thousand-year increment. Century 2000 dawned over the Pacific yesterday, and has since crossed dozens of time zones and data systems on its way to Pacific Standard Time. So if you're reading this, it means that enough newsprint has been wasted on Y2K prognostications for the artist Christo to have wrapped the planet up like one cosmic special edition.

Otherwise, the Reporter's presses and everything within the Travis Air Force Base region have been vaporized or at least melted down and we're all in that "better place" religions have promised since the first trogolodyte worshipped a rock In either case, why worry?

Assuming Scarlet O'Hara's law holds and "tomorrow is another day," rather than resolutions, I offer the one wish I've sustained through many new years: that we the voting people will start behaving like adults instead of spoiled trust-fund kids.

Maybe it's because, other than Vietnam, my American-born generation hasn't had to cope with a full-scale war, depression, famine, mass migration, or inescapable epidemics. This blessing has made us soft and quite demanding. And while it is human nature in every age, we are especially intolerant of ambiguity, and especially problems that don't respond to quick and simple solutions. Unfortunately, that describes most real problems.

Maybe baby boomers' quick-fix fixation was compounded by growing up on TV ads, honed to a science by demographers, who identify a problem and pitch the product for an immediate cure.

Whatever the cause, we must stop looking to the "system" for solutions. No private entity tries to be all things to all people if it wants to survive. The general store has gone the way of the Model T--available in any color as long as it's black--because free enterprise spurred choice (not to mention the vehicle selection with which to seek out competition down the road).

Quit placating demands that government continue socializing more and more services. It takes individuals' innovations to serve the spectrum of differing aims of education, health care, and social welfare. For their own preferences and needs, special interest groups should pool their resources to help themselves, not use them lobbying to tax everyone to pay for their pet agendas.

May 2000 be the year of personal responsibility, privatization, and choice!

© 1999 Cynthia Hahn