That was on my mind as I watched the presidential
debate the other evening. The evening
was filled with semi-truths and distortions from both candidates. For example, on the subject of jobs, Obama
said that he had managed to add 5 million jobs to the economy, while Romney
said there were no more jobs now than when Obama started. Both, in a limited way, were right. Obama’s term includes a first year in which over
4.3 million jobs were lost from the financial collapse which started in 2008, over
which Bush, not Obama, had presided, but since then about 4.5 million jobs have
been added for a net gain of less than 200,000.
Meanwhile, a vigorous economy requires a net gain of about 2 million
jobs per year because of demographic factors, and we’re not there yet. A vigorous discussion of how best to reach a
net gain of 2 million jobs a year would have been useful, but it was not to
be. And so it went, for a variety of
topics. Both candidates are smart, and
undoubtedly knew that they were obscuring rather than revealing the true
picture, but chose not to. Truth was the
victim in that debate, done in by both sides.
They were persuasive, but did not truly believe what they themselves
said.
The small obfuscations, though, were unable to
hide a larger truth, that each candidate stood in an exemplary way for a competing
vision of what America is all about.
Romney has sought to be presented as a sort of solitary prairie farmer,
exploring a hostile wilderness using only his own resources, and proud of
it. Laissez-faire Opportunity and Solitary
Individualism have been his theme, though he was strangely quiet about that
during the debate, and his background displays quite the opposite. Obama’s vision has consistently been
Community: all are needed, and all are valued.
It is an urban view emphasizing mutual accommodation and support. Both visions are strongly attractive, and they are the choice
that voters are being asked to make.
That is what tears the American electorate apart. And both visions are caricatures of real American
history; that is what must be overcome.
Americans are not solitary trekkers, but migrants,
willing to put aside a former existence and brave a hostile wilderness to
create a new life that provides opportunity and that rejects the values and
problems of the place they started from.
They are not satisfied with old values that may work for the crowd, but
do not work for them, and so they set out.
To be pioneers, they need the strength to stand alone, but also the
support to provision them, the companionship to make a hard life bearable, and
the assistance to aid them in times of maximum peril. Libertarian hermits are rare, not the norm,
and not the stuff this country is made of.
Pioneers in general did not travel alone, but went out in groups; even
Columbus had a ship full of sometimes recalcitrant, but necessary, sailors with
him, Daniel Boone established communities along the way, and mountain men spent
the summers at their annual rendezvous. Census
records show my family had the same neighboring families in Georgia in 1820,
Alabama in 1840, and Texas in 1880. And similar
community migration accounts for most pioneering in American history.
Not just the individual pioneer, but the pioneer
community is the hero of American history and the role model for America in the
21st century. Our world has
been transformed by the urbanization and technology of the 20th
century. Old ways no longer work. We must migrate. Old sources of energy destroy our environment
and must be replaced. Old laissez-faire
ways of doing business and managing health care destroy our communities and our
humanity, and must be modernized. Old
rural ways of education and unrestricted behavior no longer work in an urban
world, and must change. Old ways of
thinking that Connecticut, and Mississippi, and Nebraska and California
co-exist in parallel universes which need not follow the same rules, when
one-fourth of Americans change locations each year, must be brought up to
date. But we are, as we have always
been, a migrant community travelling along hazardous paths to a new world. We each must be able to accomplish necessary
things alone; and we all share the adventure together.
2 comments:
My brοther suggеsted Ӏ might
like this web sіtе. He was totally
rіght. Thiѕ post aсtually mаdе my dау.
You can not imagine simрlу hοw much time I had spent for this
infοrmation! Thanks!
Feel free to suгf to my wеb site; payday loans
Post a Comment