Gresham's Law, Extended

Gresham's Law -- bad money drives out good -- is a well known phenomenon of fiat currency systems. When a government decrees that two forms of money, one of which is valued less than the other by the people who use it, shall have the same legal value, the "good" or more valued money disappears into hoards while the "bad" or less valued money becomes the whole of the circulating stock. This is one of the traps of bimetallic money systems.

Gresham's Law can usefully be extended to many other venues of human interaction, including social dealing itself.

In social settings, the worst conceivable mistake one can make is to treat people as equals. People are not equals. If you value Smith's company more than Jones's, but show them equal favor and welcome, it will eventually cost you Smith's good will.

I know that, in having said this, I've pronounced the gravest of heresies by the prevailing egalitarian lights. Nevertheless! Facts are independent of our feelings about them. The Sun does not cease to shine simply because we refuse to concede it. Extreme cases -- extending the same favor to a great savant and to some alcoholic derelict -- are logically self-demonstrating. More moderate ones reveal themselves in practice.

As social practices have deteriorated in modern America, many people, including some far more worldly-wise than I, have asked in plaintive tones where our accumulated traditions of courtesy and civility have gone. To me, it's no mystery. When you allow particular individuals to lower their behavior below the prevailing standard without being penalized, you've guaranteed that the lowered standard will soon prevail. Those to whom this remains unacceptable will find themselves a sheltered spot of their own -- and it's odds-on that you won't be welcome there.

As with other cultural matters, this one is connected to many others, at many points. There's really no such thing as an isolated social pathology. All of them interact and support one another. The drug problem, the crime problem, and the problem of fatherless children could not exist without one another, nor could any of them exist had we not experienced the last half-century's decline in the manly virtues.

I have been involved with a number of organizations for political, religious, and social purposes. I have watched all of them deteriorate from groups of bright, energetic, well-intentioned people full of hope and promise to gathering grounds for the fringiest members of society. In every case the mechanism was the same:

• An open door admitted marginal members, who behaved in ways that violated the standards held by the more civilized and courteous;

• The latter, whether from distaste, disdain, or an unwillingness to be seen as "making a fuss," did not trouble to correct the former;

• Over time, those who would not lower their standards disaffiliated themselves from the group, leaving the marginals in uncontested control.

This is a recent phenomenon, no more than fifty years old. Americans used to appreciate the importance of social standards, and did whatever was necessary to uphold and strengthen them. The United States, the only country in the world that has never had a political aristocracy, had built up the most civilized society on Earth, out of nothing but its citizens' appreciation that you are what you make of yourself, and that others who won't rise to your level are not worth your time.

You can see examples of the phenomenon wherever you look. You can easily spot the genesis of decline in almost every case.

Special-interest politics, even when not deplorable for the interest itself, is a habitat for the courtesy-deprived. The spokesmen for these groups are willing to revile and publicly castigate anyone who doesn't see the world exactly as they do, with their exact, unmodified schedule of priorities. They think of this as part of their charter and their "responsibility as leaders." What it does is polarize political discourse in such a fashion that no real communication of ideas among citizens takes place, only maneuvering among cynical politicos for the allegiance of voting blocs.

In recent years, the environmentalist movement has provided a wealth of examples to this point. Name a few courteous environmentalist figures, persons of good demeanor who've said nothing stronger than that political and economic decisions ought to include respect for the world ecosystem and attention to the long-range consequences of what we do to it. Go ahead; I'll wait.

What keeps these groups together is a shared fanaticism about the ideal itself, coupled with the usual huddling instinct of creatures who would be found unacceptable in any other venue. The larger society doesn't have that kind of adhesive force.

The larger society, in fact, is becoming something that only exists in the imaginations of demographers.

Is it correctable? Of course. But it will require changes unlikely to occur in the near future: the return of the manly man, unwilling to tolerate disrespect shown to him or to respectable others, and the wholesale rejection of the creed of human equality and its concomitant, the absurd notion that "everyone's entitled to his own standards."

Strong talk, eh? Already I can hear the chorus of denunciation rising: Who are you, Mr. Porretto, to be pronouncing standards? Who are you to condemn the universal gospel of "tolerance," the ubiquitous concept that "everyone is special and valuable"?

Who am I? Why, no one. No one at all. Just a guy who knows what he'll accept and what he won't. Who are you?