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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1992-11-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 ,1992. PAGE 5. At Lisa’s I want a name change The first people of Canada attached a lot more importance to names than we do. In the Old Days, back before we took away their land and rewarded them with a lifetime supply of Bibles, Indians thought long and hard about what they would call their children. They wanted the name to reflect the personality. Thus, it could be months - in some cases years - before an Indian assumed his given name. Look at the hero in that big Hollywood hit movie last year. He was a middle-aged U.S. Cavalryman before the Indians finally got around to naming him “Dances With Wolves”. Well, what’s good enough for Kevin Costner is good enough for me. I want a name change. And I'm not fussy. You can call me Fumbles With Keyboard or Snores In Church or He Who Walks About With Fly Unzipped. I don't care what you call me. As long as it isn't Arthur. I'm sick of Arthur. I've been lugging it around for 49 years now, and I never much liked it. Mind you, I hated it even more when I was International Scene o Knowing economics Imagine that you are a housewife, a high school student, a small businessman, a farmer or an hourly-paid worker and you hear now and again the pronouncements of some economist, whose name you probably do not recognize at all or else only vaguely. He or she (there are excellent women economists) tell you that deficit financing is good or bad, interest rates are too high or low, the exchange rate is just right or way out of line or, finally, we are going to hell in a hand basket or are headed for unprecedented levels of prosperity. What are you to make of it all? Does it apply to you or can you safely ignore it? If you have questions such as these, welcome to the fascinating world of economics? I can't answer all your questions in one short article but perhaps in the next few paragraphs I can steer you in the right direction. You will, in all probability, not rush out and buy a copy of the nearest text on economics but you will have an idea of what to look for and a bit of insight of how we got here and where we are going. First of all, during the last three centuries, the men who have had the greatest influence on society have been economists, one in each century. In the 18th it was Adam Smith, the British thinker who, in his Wealth of Nations (1776) the same date, by the way, as the Declaration of Independence in the U.S., outlined the concept of the market economy. When that failed to solve all the problems, the reaction was to be found in the following century in Karl Marx, a German living in Great Britain, who came out with his “Capital” in 1867. When that, too caused problems, it was left for the 20th century to produce John Maynard Keynes, yet another British thinker, who in his “General Theory” in 1935 was responsible to a great degree for a kid. Back then I was “Artie”. It is extremely difficult to establish one's status as a major teenage sex symbol when the family telephone rings, and your sister answers it, then yells “Artie, some girl wants to talk to you!” It got worse. Later, I spent a couple of years in England and heard how plummy, upper class Brits attacked my moniker. “Awwww thuh” they called me. Sounded vaguely like a sea lion with indigestion. Could be worse. At least my parents didn't name me Attila. Or Adolph. Or Oswalde, Lee or Harvey. Names are fickle. Very few American parents are naming their children George, these days. Just as on this side of the border, newborn males sporting the name of Brian are noticeably scarce. “Arthur” doesn't carry such a tattered pedigree. Au contraire. There's Artie Shaw and Artur Schopenhauer and Arturo Toscanini. Not to mention loveable old King Arthur. And then of course, there’s our great moment of glory in Wardsville, Ont. True story: Back in the summer of 1983, a government bureaucrat - the assistant deputy minister in the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture - wrote a letter to all the municipal clerks in the province. Purpose: to ask each clerk to “submit a short brief or letter concerning the Arts in their Raymond Canon | bringing us out of the Great Depression of the 1930's and conditioning our thinking on government intervention ever since then. Since economics deals with human and is, therefore, an inexact science, it is understandable why economists have different opinions. Then, too, so do doctors but we pay far less attention to such differences in that field. Sociologists and psychologists are in the same state of affairs but they, also, incur far less criticism than we economists are subjected to. What, then, can you learn from us? Furthermore, how can you utilize such learning to your advantage? It was Keynes himself who wrote, “The ideas of economists ... both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else ...” To start off with Keynes, his proposal in 1935 that governments should become much more involved in evening out the fluctuations of the business cycle, led not only to the concept of deficit financing, i.e. spending more money than a government receives in taxes but, more recently, to the vast social welfare programs that were introduced in the post-war period to help people over the rough spots. If the cost has proven to be far greater than any government had even contemplated, do not blame Keynes. He had, all along, wanted to keep things on an even keel and certainly would not have approved of such one-sided budgeting. It probably never occurs to most Canadian home owners, not to mention those who are paying on the installment plan for new cars etc. but the interest rate they are being charged may have been more influenced by some economic decision in Washington or Europe than anything the domestic bank had to do in the matter. There is currently free trade in currency; it can flow across borders at will and bring economic decisions with it. Don't jil ways be so prone to blame one of our governments; they may be as much a victim as you are. municipality - how they are regarded, how they are funded, what effect they have on the life or the economy of the municipality ...” This is one letter he got back: “Dear Sir: Reference your letter dated 10 August 1983 requesting information on the Arts in our municipality. We are pleased to advise that we have four: Art Harold Art Morgan Art Marks Art Sweet They are all extremely well regarded in the community. They are mostly funded by Old Age Security Pension and Canada Pension, and all contribute to the economy in their day-to-day living. We are pleased you are interested in our Arts. However, we have many other names that also deserve recognition, such as William, Charles, Henry, etc., particularly many of the feminine gender, Mary, Helen, Ellen, etc. We would be pleased to forward you a full list if you so wish. Yours truly, Harold Turton Clerk, Village of Wardsville” There's my answer. I don’t have to change my name. I’ll just move to Wardsville, where we Arts are really appreciated. / If Canadians are prepared to gain much of their prosperity by being a great trading nation, they have to accept the economic conditions that go with it. Thus they have to watch wage rates in other countries, not to mention productivity, unemployment and inflation. If we let our rates on these matters get out of line, we pay the penalty for it. In short we have to keep up with the Schmidts, the Sukiyakis, the Lacroix, the Pirellis, not to mention the Bushes or the Clintons. Contrary to what some segments of our population would have you believe, putting up high protective walls does little but make matters worse. In short, we are beset from all sides by •conomic decisions, both domestic and foreign, which can make either hell or heaven in our financial world, or even somewhere in between. It was, after all, the failure of Marxism as an economic system to lead its people to the promised land which led to the downfall of the Soviet Union and its satellites. They were not defeated in military battle but an economic one. Though, Keynes may have been dead for over 40 years, his statement which I quoted in this article is still as valid as it was then. Letter to the editor Continued from page 4 frankly, the report gives the impression that Blyth Council is run by children. I don't know most of the members involved but they should work on their “paper” image a bit. Every report shows basically the same thing. Adults arguing like children, taking sides, snide remarks and basically behaving like argumentative children. Does anyone else see this? I don’t think council realizes how entertaining they are. They are saved only by the “Briefs”. Just thought I'd let you know. You never know, maybe they'll read this and learn something. Mary Sanders. More on page 23 Level By Lisa Boonstoppel-Pot Remembering those whose memories war within them Yesterday was Remembrance Day. Like many others, I remembered the young men who died to give us a freedom they never lived to see. But this year, I also remembered the ones who fought and lived, the ones who survived the war only to find another war within themselves—a war of memories. I met such a man last week. His name is Ralph McCrea and his story is featured in this paper on our special Remembrance Day page. Mr. McCrea fought in World War II as an infantry soldier. Gun in hand, he and his fellow soldiers searched houses for Germans in an attempt to push the enemy back to their own country to prevent a madman from taking over the world. His unit didn't deliberately look for German soldiers to kill them but that is inevitably what happened because it was war and if you didn't kill, you would be killed. I asked Mr. McCrea if he killed anyone. His eyes told the story. They slowly filled up with tears as the memories welled to the surface. After he'd wiped his eyes, I realized I had dredged up memories he didn't want to remember. "You block out things like that," he told me. "You don't remember things like that. You try to remember the good times." Mr. McCrea admitted his bad experiences in the war are something he rarely thinks about and almost never talks about. Il's only on Remembrance Day that the past comes back to haunt him. Knowing what we know about the sadistic and torturous Adolf Hitler and the SS, some might wonder why the memories are so painful. But Mr. McCrea said the soldiers he had to fight against weren't like Adolf Hitler or the SS. Before enlisting in the army, he had been led to believe through government propaganda that all Germans were big, rough-shod guys who killed babies. When he came face to face with the 'enemy' he realized the soldiers were just like him—innocent young men with families and friends who just wanted to go home. They were not the monsters that he'd been led to believe. Hearing this, we can begin to understand. But beginning to understand is as far as I, and most of us, will ever gel. We can read books, see films and talk to war veterans but we will never fully understand what soldiers like Mr. McCrea went through. Our lack of understanding is unfortunate but it shouldn't stop us from remembering what our veterans have done for us. Thanks to our brave soldiers, dead and alive, we live in a peaceful and bounteous land where we can feel free. The war may be over for most of us but let's never forget the ones who never came back and the ones for whom the war is never really over—the ones who have to rely every year on Remembrance Day, the price that was paid for our freedom. They gave us their lives. We should, at the very least, remember them.