An Original Take on Labor Day

Usually the Van Horn family travels on Labor Day, but this year, we're home helping our kitten adjust to her new home. Perhaps it is because I usually take a break from blogging during such trips that I have managed not to have encountered Frederic Hamber's excellent piece on the holiday.

Hamber argues persuasively that it is wrong to emphasize manual labor, and that we should instead celebrate the mental focus and creativity that underlie all production and wealth.

I particularly like the below passage:

Per blog tradition, her alias shall henceforth be Lucinda. (Image by the author. Copying permitted.)

A culture thrives to the extent that it is governed by reason and science, and stagnates to the extent that it is governed by brute force. But the importance of the mind in human progress has been evaded by most of this century's intellectuals. Observe, for example, George Orwell's novel 1984, which depicts a totalitarian state that still, somehow, is a fully advanced technological society. Orwell projects the impossible: technology without the minds to produce it.

The best and brightest minds are always the first to either flee a dictatorship in a "brain drain" or to cease their creative efforts. A totalitarian regime can force some men to perform muscular labor; it cannot force a genius to create, nor force a businessman to make rational decisions. A slave owner can force a man to pick peanuts; only under freedom would a George Washington Carver discover ways to increase crop yields. [bold added]

The entire piece is similarly inspiring, and I recommend reading it all as a means of making this holiday the celebration that it should be.

Happy Labor Day!

-- CAV