Sunday we went to one of the youngest
cousin's fiftieth wedding anniversary. (This is a clue as to the average age of
the fifteen remaining first cousins.) At the gathering were a bunch of the
older group with their spouses who had celebrated their fiftieth anniversaries
during the past decade or so… In attendance were the adult children in the
extended family, grand children and a
handful of great grandchildren. Everyone
one cleaned up real well, visited, ate of lot of cake and drank un-sweet tea….
The talk, whenever this group gets together, often has to do with growing up in
Mississippi during the depression years and family activities when we were
children.
Back then, most of Mississippi
was made up of farm families such as ours. Many subscribers to this blog have
similar family histories. Our family wasn't unique. What is unique was there
wasn't a sense of being poor…. More or less every family had the same, which
was little or nothing. You would be hard pressed to call what was going on in
Mississippi at that time an economy...If crops were good you had a little more.
If crops failed you had less…. Clothes were mostly hand-me-downs. There were no
government backstops. However, there was something that held it all together.
There were social values. There was a set of
beliefs that was common to all. These values and beliefs were the social
capitol. We had very poor people, some with a little more and a few who had a
lot compared to the very poor. All were bound together by some inner strength.
This strength was the social net. This 'net' contributed, helped out, shared
and this compassionate legacy was America and Americans. Wherever we have
gotten to, this legacy is what got us here. The ones in the family who have had
fiftieth anniversaries are old enough to recall that Mississippi and that
America. One book per class in a one room school, the orange at Christmas, and sometimes a
silver dollar on a birthday, along with prayers for rain in the summers.
That period of our history and
all the poorness that went with it is gone and good riddance. What are not gone
are the poor people.
Government, businesses, and
people have worked hard over the last half of the last century replacing the
old social capitol with financial capitol. This was a trade off few realized
was happening and was spread over a couple of generations so there weren't any
big jolts…. By the early sixties there were enough divorces that some began to
notice and worry that the core of the nation, the family, was spinning apart.
By the late sixties as President Johnson created a national mission, the war on
poverty, could we begin to see the transition to the new social capitol and the
impact on the old social capital. Once done the flood gates opened for
government to step into the role of the good neighbor and it has never looked
back. Within one generation the grandchildren accepted and expected government
to take care of all social problems and many demanded that even become more
proactive.
Looking back, governments,
throughout history, have been the ones who decide and create economies and
defines how they will work and what the rules within the economy will be. There
is an illusion that has been fostered over the last century that capital
markets and economies have been created by individuals exchanging goods and
services, i.e. the free market….The money that was used in the market place was
created and denominated by government. Government encouraged business to
produce certain things the society and government needed, inhibited foreign
competition, and the unemployed were paid to do work at different levels of
government such as build roads, plant trees, etc.
When government does its job
well we often don't know/don't see it has a hand in what is going on. When it
becomes lax and leaders become self absorbed the system starts to unwind and
becomes unstable. It is only then that we see government’s hand in the pot,
such as in this moment in time with this president and this congress behaving
like despots.
We find ourselves at this
tipping point again in America. This is not our first tipping point and will
not be our last. This representative democracy called the United States of
America is in its midlife crisis. About two hundred years is as long as similar
experiments have lasted and each historical failure can be traced to the door
step of the people in those nations through their lack of involvement, lack of
interest, lack of knowledge, and lack of responsibility. That has been the
cause of the government breakdown with all who have tried and this was always
followed by an economic breakdown. As President Truman said , "The buck
stop here" meaning his desk…. The reality is, the buck starts and stops on
our dinner tables."
We forgot to guard our elected
guardians. The Tea Party is now in the process of reminding the guardians who
they work for and how they are expected to serve and serve only at our behest.
Not an easy job but we are up to it. We dropped our forefathers' baton but it
has been picked up and the race is a long way from being over. In 2010 we wrote
lots of congressional pink slips….Hopefully we will write even more pink slips
this November. (The Dems will remember 2010 as one of their good years.) With
the defeat of our current president the whole mishmash of self-interest fringe
groups under the banner of American liberal Democrats will spin apart along
with the elected who pander to them.
If we can't get them all out in
2012, well 2014 is just around the corner. The political class will have to
deal with us every two years and ever two years we will replace a few more of
these good old boys. They are politicians who come and go but we are the
citizens. We are America. This is a last man stand sort of thing.
Clearly America is not Greece,
Italy, France, or Span. We are not going to let our politicians sink this
representative democracy even though our behavior over the past two plus
decades has led them to think so. We are the sleeping Tiger Japan feared and any
politician who forgets American history, written by its citizens not
politicians, does so at their peril.
Our political class has
forgotten… Each incumbent is holding on to his/her power by a thread of empty
promises and self delusions. Suddenly many elected Democrats are announcing
that they will not attend the Democratic Nation Convention. This speaks
volumes. As Regan so apply put it, "They can run but they can't
hide."
This war or what feels like a war on our
freedoms, beliefs, and values started long before Obama became president.
However, many in congress today, who make up the good-old-boys and girls in the
always to be reelected crowd, have been in Washington chipping away at one
right after another, one value after another, and our freedoms for low these
many election cycles while hiding behind government departments autocrats who
spew out regulations, controls, and restrictions at their behest. Protecting themselves
behind a thin cloak of denial.
One would think the political class, who
control both the Democratic and Republican parties, would sense that something
unique is happening. They don't…
This election is part of a struggle for the
preservation of America and a way of life of the citizens that this political
class does not know, understand, or have any contact with. It is as if they
live in some parallel universe.
This country created more wealth, safety,
and still offers hope for a better life for our children and grandchildren
today as it did before this political class emerged and the current group of
elected representatives got elected the first time.
Note to all these candidates:
What we the people want is simple: We want the minimum necessary government. A government
which defends individual freedom, our country, supports those in real need,
takes as little of our money as possible to run, and doesn't impose itself in
our lives.
Our current President, congressional
leaders, the media, and all other who make up this elite political class are at
odds with the Tea party in general and these simple American birthrights.
The Tea Party is not simply a sub-group of
unhappy dumb voters complaining about this or that tax or law... The Tea Party
folks are the salt. It is they and their fathers who have fought many bloody
wars when less was at stake.
As I was getting ready to post this article
I started listening to the Supreme Court's decision on Obama Care…. The word
"infamy" came to mind. I have never used or heard the word used since
I was very young. President Roosevelt described Japans attack on Pearl Harbor
as the Day of Infamy. Earlier in this article I talked about a tipping point.
This decision in my mind is a tipping point.
Now we have a congress, a president, and the Supreme Court saying that
no matter what the majority of voters wants it is for the political class to
decide what is best for them.
No matter how many new Tea Party folks
there will be come November can they offset the seventeen million new folks who
now will be on our, free to them, medical system with their health coverage
being paid for by the people who work and the businesses they work for? Maybe
more importantly, given our current health system, will it not collapse under
the weight of all the new citizens’ patients?
The answer may lie in the adage, "When
the going get tough the tough get going."
I saw a wonderful tee shirt the other day
that said, "I am the Tea Party".
I though, yes he is the Tea Party and I am the Tea Party….What a simple
and powerful statement. Each of us is the Tea Party
134 days, 10 hours and 32 minutes till the
November voting begins.
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
