LOAVES AND FISHES

Richard Fernandez on Robert Reich’s “unsayable truths.”

In ostensibly addressing Reich’s “we’re going to let you die” speech at UC Berkeley in 2007, Fernandez got to the heart of the matter: choice. According to Reich,

Things come down to choices: lower costs versus death panels; torture versus intelligence; equity versus growth.

But there are deeper, more fundamental, choices to be made.

The missing pairs of choices in Reich’s list are these: creativity versus certainty, risk versus return, bureaucracy versus innovation. We can live only if we take the risk. That is the most unsayable truth of all.

Reich’s view is that the “loaves and fishes” must be supplied by a benevolent government to ensure equity. My view is that I’d rather bake my own bread and catch my own fish.

Or, as Fernandez eloquently put it, there’s no life without risk: “There’s no reason to believe in a valley over the next hill, or a new world across a sea of stars. But if [we] are going to ... die anyway, then what have we got to lose by trying to get there?”