The Cunning Realist notes that one effect of an economic downturn can be to turn people away from shallow materialism toward the values that matter and reward, like family, saving, and performing your own home activities.

During the Bush years, I often wondered how many on the Religious Right understood the irony in supporting an administration that unabashedly promoted an almost demonic obsession with the material world (Bush: “Go shopping”). Gerson embraces the effects of natural downturns in the economic cycle: cultural renewal, thrift, family commitment, savings, morality, frugality, and prudence. It appears some — and I don’t mean Gerson necessarily — are rediscovering the importance of those things, and justifiably objecting to Washington’s extraordinary economic measures as symbols of opposite values.