I really couldn't believe it when I read it: the United Auto Workers are threatening Ford with a strike. Maybe you have to have worked in the auto industry to be stunned by that. I am not completely one-sided about unions, and would have no trouble praising them in the right places. But the UAW stands out as a union that has worked for decades to put its members out of a good-paying job.

Over the last few months the blogosphere has complained that the bank bailouts have simply created a 'business as usual' mindset on Wall Street. And why shouldn't it? When people get away with reckless behavior, they keep at it. But to hear of the same thing happening in Detroit right now stunned me even more.

What was that old saying about the Bourbons, when their monarchy was restored after Napoleon was finally put away: that 'they remembered everything, and learned nothing?'

During the bailout debates many people commented on moral hazard. Apparently that had little effect. To some people it might have sounded puritanical or preachy. To politicians it probably seemed irrelevant, since they had to look like they were 'doing something.'

When you look back over a life it isn't hard to see that most days didn't really mean much. The days that stand out were ones of disaster or misadventure. The kid learns something when he falls off the bike and bloodies his knee. So too might Wall Street and Detroit have learned something had it not been for an over-protective mommie in Washington.

The long term consequences of a fundamentally flawed policy really don't make the daily news trivia. But we are gradually seeing those consequences now. This makes me want to reread Toynbee. He compared different societies' responses to a challenge or threat: did they learn something and rise to the occasion, or not? America has flunked its test.