The South will rise again

It‘s good to know that Americans can still pack away their political ideologies when the chips are down. I returned from vacation last week to read in USA Today that President Bush was generating more liberal social programs to save the South than FDR in the Great Depression. It was like stepping into a time warp back to 1966 and Lyndon Johnson‘s War on Poverty: Cash handouts, urban homesteading, tax breaks, educational assistance and job training... somewhere LBJ must be smiling.
They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and the same must be true of conservatives after a hurricane passes through. When hurricanes devastated the Florida coast last year, the most ardent, tax-cutting, government-hating, Ditto-head conservatives lined up to say “me too“ to assistance from the federal government. I doubt they think of themselves as born again liberals, but they are walking the walk, and talking the talk, ‘til the next election anyway.
It just goes to show that politics is mostly theater and when the winds of fate blow the big top away, we‘re all just a bunch of shivering, fearful Americans in need of each other‘s help.
We‘re rich enough, smart enough and strong enough. We can lend a hand. How‘s that for a political philosophy?
***
Speaking of which, it was also good to read that one Grover Norquist has been roundly trashed for his statement that he aims to “drown government in a bathtub.“
Sometimes referred to as the “Field Marshall of the Bush Plan,“ Norquist is an arch conservative who heads up a group called Americans for Tax Reform, which has been very influential in creating policies for the Republican Party. Some liberal conspiricists claim that his ideas have been put to work by the Bush administration, which they claim has gone spend-crazy over the past five years with the Trojan Horse goal of strangling liberal programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for lack of federal funds. It sounds completely whack-a-do, but then, so do Norquist‘s ideas.
Specifically, Norquist said, “My goal is to cut government in half in 25 years to get it down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.“
That would be a fine notion if Americans would prefer to live in a state of anarchy and barbarism on par with Liberia or Afghanistan under the Taliban, but the idea of murdering our government doesn‘t fly too well when there are little problems to solve on par with, say, World War II or New Orleans under water. Where would America be today if the four chaps we have carved in stone on Mt. Rushmore had held the same ideas about “drowning government in a bathtub“?
Someone give this guy a one-way ticket to Somalia where he can put his theories into action with the warlords who run that sorry, government-free place.
***
Hmmm... tens of thousands of wrecked homes and a few million poor black folks without any job skills... Can anyone connect the dots?
Job training for the poor in the South should start with hammers, saws and power drills. People down there need to learn real jobs that they can take anywhere, and the building trades are one of the last robust industries in America.
Many builders, carpenters and tradesmen of every specialty from Northern Michigan are already streaming down South to help in the reconstruction. Couldn‘t they help teach some poor black kids from the ghettos of New Orleans how to drive a nail or level a foundation?
It‘s ironic that the South, which still nurtures resentment over the Civil War 140 years ago, will be getting a big hand-up from a bunch of damn Yankees. Maybe those “hell no, I ain‘t forgettin‘ folks“ will finally put that tired old us-versus-them talk behind themselves. Maybe we‘ll create a new generation of builders who are free from handouts and poverty. Maybe the press -- which has rediscovered poor people after all these years -- will take a greater role in explaining their problems and finding solutions. Maybe we‘ll stuff the radical-right‘s selfish, “me-first“ political philosophy for the time being and learn to walk in humbler shoes, at least until America is made whole again.

View On Our Website