More importantly, he admires the merit-based society they cultivate that supports risk-taking and innovation. He sees their culture as building a virtuous economy that both was both “fantastically good for the bottom line” and good for the environment, poor people, personal satisfaction, neighborhoods … you name the cause.

Whether he was wrong or right, a few of those Harvard MBAs caught up in that virtuous economic cycle lost their moral compass and broke the rhythm. They turned our economy into a discordant mess of government-controlled or soon-to- be government-controlled enterprises, failed lending institutions and struggling businesses of all stripes hurt by consumers’ decisions to curtail spending.

Will these same Bobos who reigned before the mess – and some of whom who put us here – live to rule again? Or will the corporatist, top-down, bureaucratic management favored by mid-century corporations and the government so ridiculed in William H. Whyte’s 1956 “The Organization Man” come back into vogue?

And what will this mean for our economy and culture? Will those who job-hopped turn into government-employee lifers, satisfied with four weeks of vacation each year and excellent health benefits?

Will we stop aspiring to own a Mercedes and instead settle for cleaning the car we own with the indestructible ShamWow? Will the same culture that taught us how to create trillions in wealth over the last decade – and destroy it – fade into history?

The jury is out – at least for the short term. The religious fervor surrounding the election of Barack Obama indicates many people want a healer-in-chief rather than a president.

And the near-universal acceptance in America that we must do something, anything, NOW, and that the government must do it, speaks to a desire for a more paternalistic society.

Since bigger government by nature means a smaller private sector, a more statist society means we will generate less wealth as a nation in years to come. Obama himself said in his inauguration speech, “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works—whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”  That is hardly a clarion call to return to the days of self-fulfillment.

Louis Galambos, an economic historian at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, says the big question that worries him is how much of the stimulus money in that $787 billion package – and any subsequent packages — goes to special interests.

“Subsidies in any system … once you get them in there, they are not going away,” he said.

That, and nationalist tendencies that lead to restricting trade are the two things that could really hinder America’s growth in coming years and are a prime reason the Great Depression lasted so long in the 1930s, he said.

But he does not think the short-term rush to fix things will lead to a long-term change in Americans’ values. It’s too early to predict as the stimulus package has not worked itself through the economy, he said.

Second, short-term responses do not change the underlying values of a society that much, he said, pointing to how society accepted great interventionism in the 1930s but swung back to a more conservative position on government’s role in later decades.

That’s good news. But this time it is not just the United States that needs to recover, but the world. Resisting the siren call of a permanently bigger state will require a clear exit plan for government intervention, transparency, and leaders able to stand down special interests groups whose resistance to ending subsidies, as Galambos said, will be “proportional to the pressure to try to get rid of them.”

Examiner columnist Marta H. Mossburg lives in Baltimore and can be reached at [email protected].