The Road to Perdition       

 

Harry T. Cook
By
Harry T. Cook
6/17/14


In an article meant to explain one thing, the New York Times explained another. The paper was trying to tell its readers why Eric Cantor, once the highly placed U.S. House Majority leader, was taken down by a little-known college professor.

 

The explanation was that the tides of migration had brought people from other parts of the nation into Cantor's district who knew not Pharaoh. The newcomers were less interested in having such a powerful figure as their congressman than they were in sending somebody -- anybody -- to Washington who will do something -- anything -- to stymie America's first African-American president.

 

That analysis was applied to the near-unseating of Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, whose opponent in the primary may yet take Cochran's place. All  new residents knew of Cochran was that he had actually behaved like a spiritual descendant of Solon rather than as a political hooligan.

 

Yet the real explanation came in a quote from a 77-year-old woman who, with her husband, had recently moved to Mississippi from Tennessee. They both liked Cochran's challenger, whoever he was, because of his staunch conservative stance. "We like less federal government, we don't like all this debt, we like more freedom," she said.

 

There you have abysmal ignorance on display. Let us take the three points of her statement ad seriatim:

  • She likes "less federal government." What can that mean? A smaller defense apparatus that would leave America vulnerable to attacks from abroad? Fewer Border Patrol and immigration officers to keep out would-be terrorists? A scaled-down Social Security Administration that might not be able to get her monthly benefits to her and her age cohort? An attenuated National Park Service so that the nation's gems of nature would be left go to the dogs? A paring down of the Air Traffic Control staffs so that airplanes would have greater chance of colliding in midair? The deconstruction of the federal court system that justice could no longer roll down like waters? 
  • She doesn't like "all this debt." What is "all this debt"? What does she know about the intricacies of national and global finances? And of how debt on a national scale can do as much good as harm? Of how government spending in the area of public works could not only give us critically needed repairs to highways, bridges, railways and electric grids but provide employment that in turn would yield tax revenue along with a greatly improved national infrastructure?
  • She likes "more freedom." Freedom to do what? What reasonable civic freedom does she not enjoy? She can vote. She could move from Tennessee to Mississippi without any state border guard questioning her or her intent. She can read what she pleases, see what TV shows and movies she pleases. She can buy what she can afford. She can go into debt to buy what she can't immediately afford. She can openly denounce the resident of the White House even if she hasn't the slightest clue as to what he's trying to accomplish. She could even use the N word of him pretty much with impunity.  

What freedoms does she not have that anyone could have in such a republican democracy as ours? Does she want the freedom to pay taxes only for the things of which she approves? Some of us wanted to do that during the Vietnam war era and were sternly warned that the Internal Revenue Service would take a very dim view of such a thing.

 

Does she want the freedom to run red lights, ignore stop signs, urinate in public, smoke on commercial airliners, slander and libel people she hates? What freedoms that would not deny others their freedoms would she have?

 

When I read about such people as the woman now from Mississippi formerly of Tennessee, I hear the anguished voice of St. Paul crying, "Who shall deliver me from this body of death?"

 

If people are going to the polls -- that is, those with politics that please those making ever-stringent voting laws that keep others away from America's voting booths -- armed only with ignorance and inchoate resentment, then the entity that we celebrate in the words of Francis Scott Key as "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is on its way to perdition.


Copyright 2014 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

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