Let’s face it. I’m a southerner. I was born in the south (South Carolina), spent my youth in the south (Florida and Georgia), went to college in the south (Georgia Tech) and remain in the south to this day. I know what grits are made of, and I believe that there is only two kinds of tea in this world, “sweet tea” and “swotty nancy-boy fancy pants tea”.
That said, I spent most of my adult life as a political conservative. I believed that a government that governs least, governs best. Unlike many of my southern brethren (and sistren), I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the “Religious Right” or other elements of the Republican party that differed from my own philosophy of “government has no business in my business”.
Then, one day, I woke up and the religious kooks took over the asylum. Dubya was out there doing his best “guns, gawd, and gub’mint” routine, and there was no place in the Republican party for a guy who just wanted to be left alone to live his life his own way. I couldn’t go with the Democrats because they were the party of “liberal college kids, poor people, Yankees, and Ted Kennedy”. I really didn’t care what they had to offer, which is fortunate because they had very little to offer except opposition to Bush.
In 2004, I held my nose as I voted for John Kerry. I wasn’t voting for him as much as I was voting “no” on 4 more years of Dubya-nomics. John Kerry is about as inspiring as a pep talk from Ben Stein. I was dreading 2008 because I assumed that it would be the coronation of Hillary Clinton, and like most other southerners, I believed that she was one step away from the Antichrist himself.
A funny thing happened on the way to her coronation.
I started paying attention to some of the rhetoric coming from the Democrats. I started hearing words like “middle class tax cut” and “balanced budget”. Instead of the “I’d like to teach the world to sing” foreign policy stances of Liberals past, I was hearing “We’ve got to go into Afghanistan and Pakistan and get Osama bin Laden”. I was hearing criticism of the Iraq war, not because they were defeatist, or pacifist, but because our government was going after the wrong guy. Meanwhile, our “Conservative” administration was promoting things like the Patriot Act, and engaging in a systematic erosion of rights, civil and otherwise, in the name of some nebulous “War of Terror”.
In all of this, I still held the belief that “Socialism is Evil”. I was particularly fond of the canard that Socialized health care would be run with the cost-effectiveness of the military and the bedside manner of the IRS.
Then I started reading stuff like this…
One of my favorite political authors is James Carville. When he managed Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, he had 3 issues on the white board in his “War Room”
- Change vs. more of the same.
- The economy, stupid.
- Don’t forget health care.
Sound familiar? It’s a winning formula for any election. If things are good, you want more of the same. If not, go the other way. I’ve heard that somewhere else, but I can’t remember where.
One of Carville’s most memorable phrases is one that he got from his momma. “Tell me who you run with, and I’ll tell you who you are.” In fact, I seem to remember stealing that phrase for something, but I can’t remember precisely what it was…
It is an article of faith in some parts of this country that Europe is a Socialist cess-pool where nobody works, and the government is nanny to a bunch of lazy malcontents. Of course those of us who have actually spoken to a real live European know that they seem to be happy, well-adjusted, and oh-so-amused at the continuing hijinks of “Those crazy Americans”. We work harder, for more hours and get less for it than our European friends, and yet we’re the ones turning our collective noses up at them. While Europeans are enjoying between 4 and 6 weeks of vacation (PAID!!!) per year, many Americans don’t even take the 2 to 3 weeks per year that we receive. Some might argue that adopting a European approach would “slow us down”, however the overall health and welfare of a society is measured in terms that go beyond mere economic output.
When you consider that much of our economic “productivity” is based on borrowing, lending, and speculation, maybe a more pragmatic, “slower” approach is in order. Maybe re-channeling some of that economic activity directly into things that benefit all of us such as health care, or more worker-friendly labor regulations might be better for us in the long run.
Oh, by the way… Last year the European Union surpassed the United States as the largest economy in the world. Maybe we could learn something from them.
Post a Comment