A Real Values Choice (Nov. 24, 2009)
In a recent column on healthcare, David Brooks wrote: “Reform would make us a more decent society,
but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in
the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already
made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.”
The column seems to offer a reasoned assessment of the choice facing lawmakers, but at the end it is clear that Brooks
has set up and “either/or” dichotomy between healthcare and economic growth when a “both/and” is just
as plausible. His scenario is based on the fact that at the moment we are spending a million dollars a day on two wars, neither
of which will determine our future security and both will eventually be abandoned because of the lack of public support that
will intensify as they drag on. Republicans have become predictable in whining about deficit spending and economic stagnation
without lamenting the fact that they got us into these wars and cut taxes while doing so. Brooks was fully supportive of both
at the time. His description of the “values” choice we now face as a nation is at bottom an example of hypocrisy
masking as serious reflection.
I say this because he has yet to argue that the only sane choice President Obama
faces in regard to Afghanistan is to get out troops out as soon a possible. The call in Congress for a "war tax”
to pay for any expansion is the first honest admission about the financial costs war involves. The human toll is tragic, and
not to be forgotten for even a minute. It alone should have been enough to cause Americans to demand an end to Iraq and Afghanistan
and the insane notion that our nation’s foreign policy should be waging constant war, as Andrew Bacevich suggests it
now is. It hasn’t. But the economic drain on our economy will. Money always gets our attention. The war tax, even if
it never becomes law, is the perfect way to raise the conscious level of all Americans to the reality that wars costs money
as well as lives.
Brooks’ view on the choice we face on healthcare assumes we will continue
to spend money we don’t have on war and also continue the foolish and immoral tax cuts Bush put into place. He is probably
correct that as things now stand, the savings the current bills propose will not be sufficient to halt the rise in healthcare
costs. That, however, simply strengthens the argument for getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan without delay and raising taxes
on the wealthiest Americans. If Brooks wants to write about the actual values choice we face as a nation, this is it. We should
not have to choose between a just healthcare system and economic growth. But we should face up to the choice the fighting
of unnecessary wars puts before us.
A Flag of ShameJune 9, 2009 Recently the community where I live has been embroiled in a controversy surrounding a high
school student displaying a Confederate flag decal in the window of his truck. On a story about this conflict, a Minneapolis
Star Tribune reported stated, “The Confederate flag, seen by many as a racist symbol, is defended by others as an icon
of Southern culture and history.” As a native Virginian with family still there, including my 91 year old mother, I
take offense at such a misguided statement. The only Southerners who believe the Confederate flag is anything other than a
symbol of racism are those who still believe the south was right in fighting a war to maintain ownership of slaves. What is
more, that this is an issue here in Minnesota is an example of how bereft we Americans are in knowing our own history. The
Confederate flag is no more a Southern flag than it is an American flag. The most that can and ought to be said about it is
that reminds all of us of a shameful period in our national history when we came close to undoing this great experiment in
democracy.
To the student and those who want to defend his right to do as he pleases, I say this. Unless
you grew up in the south, unless you are old enough to have experienced racial segregation, discrimination, and intimidation,
and unless you participated in the years of struggle to right these wrongs, anything you say about the Confederate flag is
at best uninformed conjecture and at worse a display of racial insensitivity. Slavery and the hundred years of Southern racism
that followed it form a necessary historical context for understanding what the Confederate flag truly symbolizes. You needed
to have seen “Whites Only” signs hanging in store windows to know what it means. You had to watch city workers
drain the public swimming pools and fill them with concrete when there was an attempt to integrate them to know what it means.
You had to hear your friends, family members, church members, and politicians use racial epithets with ease and frequency
to know what it means. You had to see the humiliation in the face of adult black men when white kids called them “boy”
to know what it means.
If you are one who believes this issue is about first amendment rights, you simply
do not grasp the weight of history attached to it. If you think it is an innocent matter of wanting to play the “Dukes
of Hazard, redneck-type thing,” you are associating fantasy with reality. The history you are ignoring is my history.
My Virginia ancestors were among those who fought to defend the morally indefensible practice of slave trade. Displaying that
awful Confederate flag in any form is to do the same thing. Let’s be clear. That flag doesn’t belong to you. It
belongs to the South and no one else. And millions of us who are proud of our heritage nonetheless see it for what it is -
a flag of shame.
|
