10 Books Every Conservative Must Read by Benjamin Wiker

Author:Benjamin Wiker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brisance Books Group LLC
Published: 2010-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), It’s a Miserable Life (2008)

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is a truly great movie starring Jimmy Stewart, who plays a truly great American hero, George Bailey, the head of the local bank in Bedford Falls. When the people make a run on his bank, George Bailey must explain to the crowd how a bank really works. It doesn’t have a big pile of money that directly corresponds to everyone’s savings and checking account. “No, but you . . . you . . . you’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The, the money’s not here.” Bailey points to one person lined up to withdraw everything, and then another and another. “Well, your money’s in Joe’s house . . . that’s right next to yours . . . and in the Kennedy House, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and, and a hundred others.” He continues, “Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?”

There is a lot in this little speech. The money in the bank comes from the local people. Bailey is compassionate, but not with other people’s money. In order to stay in business, in order to keep his depositors’ assets, he must be careful about giving his loans to people who can actually pay them back. The community members depend on him lending their money responsibly. Bailey consistently acts with admirable charity, and one essential aspect of this is that he doesn’t give loans to people with no jobs, whose only qualification for the loan is that they can fog a mirror with their breath; he doesn’t give fantastic rates to local people on outlandishly large sums to buy houses well beyond their means. That would destroy everyone’s hard-earned wealth in Bedford Falls. He uses the common wealth of the community responsibly, to build up the community.

Now, let’s imagine a 2008 remake of the movie, It’s a Miserable Life. In it, certain Congressmen in Washington get the idea that everyone in Bedford Falls should have a house, a big house, even those who don’t have jobs. They want to compel Bailey’s bank to give loans entirely without regard to qualifications, and indeed, put a quota system on low income/no income subprime mortgages. But Congress wants to go beyond providing houses to low income/no income folks. To stimulate the national economy (which gets them votes), they want everyone to buy houses that are entirely beyond reach, so they provide ridiculously low initial interest rates on adjustable rate mortgages, and pressure banks to give out promiscuously. Bailey knows all this will destroy Bedford Falls, and refuses to participate. But the villain of the movie, the evil financier Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), leaps at the chance because he doesn’t care about Bedford Falls, and he knows that he can bundle his bad loans and sell them all back to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or some dupable foreign investor.

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