One of the great things about studying history, even somewhat casually, is that you begin to see that despite what pundits may want us to believe, there is not much happening that is truly new. We often make the mistake of looking at an event taking place today and thinking that it is unprecedented, and often troubling, without realizing that, while some of the concrete examples may be different, in principle it has all happened before.

We look at such events as the recent government investment of millions of dollars in “green energy” companies, Solyndra for example, which fail, and bemoan how government is wasting money, playing favorites in the economy, and cronies are taking over. We tend to think this is a modern occurrence and if only we could return to earlier times it would not happen. This of course ignores the long history of cronyism in the United States: From President Washington creating a government fur trading company in what is now Ohio, which failed, to President Lincoln pushing for subsidized transcontinental railroads, which failed and spawned numerous scandals, to President Franklin Roosevelt expanding the Reinvestment Finance Corporation to stimulate the economy during the depression, which became notoriously corrupt and was used by the party in power (either one) to buy votes into the 1950s. While it is true that such interventions are more common now, given the expansion of the role of government, but they are not a new occurrence.

Another instance is an example from a video I recently watched (you can find it at the end of this post) in which the presenter was discussing raising the minimum wage with two young men. The young men were in favor of raising the minimum wage because they believed the current wage was too low for someone to live on comfortably. The presenter then pointed out that 50 years ago United States coins were made from silver and the minimum wage was just $1.25, five quarters, and if quarters were still made of silver the value of five quarters would be about $17.00. Which is to say, in essence, that in the past, the dollar was worth something but now it is debased. I had thought this was something of a new situation, perhaps only seen since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and especially since the United States went off the gold standard. Then I read the following in Horatio Alger’s young adult novel Ragged Dick, the story of a young boy living on the streets of New York prior to the Civil War. “It must be remembered by my readers, who may regard the prices given as too low, that the events here recorded took place several years before the war, when one dollar was equal to two at the present day.” So while the scale of the change is different, even in the 1870s, when this book was written, people complained that in the past a dollar was actually worth something.

The final example I want to give, and the spur to this post, involves dancing. Last year the media was filled with stories about Miley Cyrus’s “twerking” performance on the MTV Video Music Awards. Comments such as “(J)ust watched that Miley Cyrus / teddy bear performance and I think I’m now legally required to put myself on some kind of registry,” “It’s also called having no shame and being irresponsibly stupid and trashy” and “This is our “culture” of today. Strip club moves and Grand Theft Auto violence. Keep it classy America.” are representative of much of the response to her performance. Compare these comments to the following, published in the Times of London in 1816. (h/t Paul Hsieh on Facebook)

National morals depend on national habits: and it is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compression of the bodies, in their dance, to see that is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which have hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is attempted to be forced upon respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion…We know not how it happened (probably by recommendation of some worthless and ignorant French dancing master) that so indecent a dance has now for the first time been exhibited at the English Court; but the novelty is one deserving of severe reprobation, and we trust will never be tolerated in any moral English society.

The obscene dance of which the Times felt the need warn parents? The contagion which could destroy the morals of the country? The waltz.

As the saying goes: The more things change, the more they remain the same.