THE HOPE OF AUDACITY
by Mark Steyn
"I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to
elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a
political climate of opinion which will make it politically
profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it
is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right
thing the will not do the right thing either, or if they try,
they will shortly be out of office." - Milton Friedman, Milton
Friedman in Australia (1975)
In February 2009, a few weeks after his inauguration, President
Obama went to Congress to deliver America's first State of the
European Union address. It included the following:
"I think about Ty'Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school
I visited in Dillon, South Carolina - a place where the ceilings
leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop
teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their
classroom. She had been told that her school is hopeless, but the
other day after class she went to the public library and typed up
a letter to the people sitting in this chamber. She even asked
her principal for the money to buy a stamp. The letter asks us
for help, and says, 'We are just students trying to become
lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day
president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South
Carolina but also the world. We are not quitters.' That's what
she said. 'We are not quitters.'"
There was much applause, and this passage was cited approvingly
even by some conservatives as an example of how President Obama
was yoking his "ambitious vision" (also known as record-breaking
spending) to traditional appeals to American virtues. In fact,
the Commander-in-Chief was deftly yoking the language of American
exceptionalism to the cause of European statism. Apparently,
nothing testifies to the American virtues of self-reliance and
entrepreneurial energy like joining the monstrous army of robotic
extras droning in unison, "The government needs to do more for
me...." The animating principles of the American idea were
entirely absent from Obamds vision - unless by American
exceptionalism you mean an exceptional effort to harness an
exceptionally big government in the cause of exceptionally
massive spending.
Consider first the least contentious part:
"We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors,
congressmen..."
The doctors are now on track to becoming yet another group of
government employees; the lawyers sue the doctors for medical
malpractice and, when they've made enough dough, like
ambulance-chaser par excellence John Edwards, they get elected to
Congress. The American Dream, twentyfirst-century version? Is
there no one in Miss Bethea's school who'd like to be an
entrepreneur, an inventor, a salesman, a generator of wealth?
Someone's got to make the dough the government's already spent.
Maybe Dillon High School's most famous alumnus, Federal Reserve
chairman Ben Bernanke, could explain it to them.
As for the train "barreling by their classroom," the closest the
railroad track comes to the school is about 240 yards, or over an
eighth of a mile. The president was wrong: trains are not
barreling by any classroom six times a day. And, even if they
were, that's fewer barrelings per diem than when the school was
built in 1912, or the new wing added in 1957. Incidentally,
multiple press reports referred to the "113-year old building."
Actually, that's the building behind the main school - the
original structure from 1896, where the School District
bureaucracy now has its offices. But if, like so many people, you
assume an edifice dating from 1896 or 1912 must ipso facto be
uninhabitable, bear in mind that the central portion of the main
building was entirely rebuilt in 1983.
That's to say, this rotting, dilapidated, mildewed Dotheboys Hall
of a Gothic mausoleum dates all the way back to the Cyndi Lauper
era. Needless to say, the Obama stenographers up in the press
gallery were happy to take the Hopeychanger-in-Chief at his word
on the facts of the case. But even more striking is how
indifferent they were to the bigger question: "She had been told
her high school is hopeless," said the president. But surely a
school lavishly funded by world and historical standards that
needs outside help from the national government for a paint job
is, by definition, "hopeless"?
What of the students' alleged ambition to "make a change to not
just the state of South Carolina but also the world"? Well, why
not start closer to home? Instead of "changing the world," why
not try to change your crummy school and your rundown town? Or
does that lack the Obamaesque glamour of healing the planet? Come
to that, why would the rest of humanity want to have the world
changed by someone who can't organize a paint job?
In practice, one-worldism conveniently absolves one of doing
anything about more localized and less exotic concerns - such as
peeling paint and leaking ceilings. And, if a schoolhouse is so
afflicted, what's the best way to fix it? Applying for federal
funds and processing the building maintenance through a huge
continental bureaucracy? Or doing what my neighbors in New
Hampshire did when the (older than Dillon) grade-school
bell-tower was collapsing? The carpenters and painters donated
their time, and the materials were paid for through the proceeds
of such non-world-changing activities as community square dances
and bean suppers.
If that sounds sick-makingly Norman Rockwell, well, take it from
me, small town life is hell and having to interact with
folksy-type folks in a "tightly knit community" certainly takes
its toll, and the commemorative photo montage in the restored
tower of gnarled old Yankees in plaid looking colorful while
a-hammerin' and a-shinglin' doesn't fully capture many of the
project's arcane yet fractious disputes. Still, forget the
cloying smalltown sentimentality: it's the quickest and cheapest
way to get the job done. It always is.
Dillon, South Carolina, is a city of about 6,000 people. Is there
really no way they can organize acceptable accommodation for a
two-grade junior High School without petitioning the Sovereign in
Barackingham Palace?
Like many municipalities with a significant black population,
Dillon has an absence of men: in a quarter of its households, the
only adult is a female; in the town as a whole, there are 80 men
for every 100 women. Then again, painting walls does not require
a burly old brute, and, with a county employment rate of 15
percent, there are surely residents of Dillon with time
available. Wouldn't it have made an inspiring tale if, instead of
beseeching King Barack the Two-Coats, the people of Dillon had
just got on with it and done it themselves? It's the sort of
thing they'd once have made a heartwarming TV movie about: "The
Little Junior High That Could."
Ah, but instead of the can-do spirit we now have the
can-do-with-somegovernment-funding spirit. And it's hard to get
an inspirational heartwarmer out of that.
From The New England Primer to federally disbursed primer:
Tocqueville would weep. "It is in the township that the strength
of free peoples resides," he wrote. "Municipal institutions are
for liberty what primary schools are for science; they place it
within reach of the people.... Without municipal institutions, a
nation is able to give itself a free government, but it lacks the
spirit of liberty."
Even if the federal behemoth were capable of timely classroom
repainting from D.C. to Hawaii, consider the scale of government
and the size of bureaucracy that would be required. Once such an
apparatus is in place, it won't content itself with paint jobs.
The issue is not the decrepitude of the building but the
decrepitude of liberty. Maybe Big Government can spend enough of
our children's money to halt the degradation of infrastructure.
But the degradation of citizenship - of the "spirit of liberty"
is harder to reverse.
As dispiriting as Miss Bethea's letter was, Obama's citation of
it was even more so. How could any citizen - president of a
self-governing republic quote approvingly a plea for remote,
centrally regulated, continent-wide dependency?
Because that's what he likes about it: the willingness of
freeborn citizens to be strapped in to the baby seats of Big
Nanny. Ty'Sheoma Bethea's application for federal dependency
justifies the ruling class' belief in its own indispensability.
That's why it got read out in Congress. Almost two years later,
in a strikingly whiney response even by his own standards, Obama
pleaded to a liberal interviewer that he was merely the
president, not the king. Well, how did large numbers of people
such as young Miss Bethea get so confused on that point? For both
the ruling class and a huge number of its subjects, it is not
just routine but (as Obama suggested) somehow admirable to look
to central government to supply your needs - shelter, sustenance,
clothing, medication, painless sedatives both pharmaceutical and
figurative. To Ty'Sheoma Bethea and her school chums, it sounds
liberating: if the benevolent state takes care of all your needs,
you're free to concentrate on "changing the world." In reality,
you've already changed it - from a state of raw, messy liberty to
one on the path to despotic insolvency. What would be the price
of a gallon of paint once it's been routed through a massive
centralized education bureaucracy?
(Oh and how true, many a time in the past ABC and it's 20/20
Friday evening show, told us about Big Government crazy spending
- a new toilet seat for some Government office, at $1,000
installed and etc, and etc. were the examples given - Keith Hunt)
For the moment that remains a purely hypothetical thought. On the
other hand, the first major item of congressional business after
the Democrats' midterm shellacking in 2010 was to pass a "Food
Safety" Act, among whose items was federal regulation of
schoolhouse bake sales. If the students of Dillon ever rouse
themselves to do something about their peeling paint and
train-rattled windows by selling blueberry pies and cranberry
muffins, they can at least do so knowing their baked goods are
now under the supervision of the Imperial Court in Washington.
....................
THE SILLIEST AND CRAZIEST AND EXPENSIVE JOBS HAVE BEEN DONE BY
BIG GOVERNMENT OVER THE DECADES. IT IS NOT JUST THE DEMONCRATS IN
THE WHITE HOUSE, IT IS THE REPUBLICANS IN THE WHITE HOUSE ALSO,
DOES NOT SEEM TO MAKE MUCH DIFFERENCE. THEY HAVE BOTH BEEN TO
BLAME FOR THE SIMPLEST OF JOBS USING TAX PAYER'S MONEY IN THIS OR
THAT REPAIR OR SUPPLIES, THAT IF YOU WERE PERSONALLY DOING WOULD
ONLY COST 1/5 OF WHAT IT COSTS THE GOVERNMENT. AND THESE ARE
PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT JOBS THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FROM THE IVY-
LEAGUE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES - PEOPLE WITH "BRAINS" BUT THEIR
BRAINS SEEM TO STOP FUNCTIONING WHEN IT COMES TO SPENDING TAX
PAYING PEOPLE'S MONEY. IT TRULY CAN BE AND OFTEN IS CRAZY
MADNESS!!
......
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