What The Tea Party Misses
What the Democrats have failed completely to explain in this campaign is that Romney and the Tea Party are essentially attempting to re-litigate the Civil War.
Other than slavery I could easily ascribe to the South’s position in the middle of the 1800’s. I would rather keep government close and controllable when most problems were also local.
However it is disguised by campaign rhetoric, “States Rights” is Romney and the Tea Party’s basic philosophical stand but what I don’t understand is why no single Democrat has tried to explain what is really going on a century and a half later. Times change and the world is entirely different than it was in 1860 when most events and consequences were local.
Federal Government is Growing
Yes, the Federal Govt. is growing, but what never seems to get explained is the reason and rationale behind this growth. The country is growing. Technology is changing, the world is getting much smaller. It no longer takes a week to get to Europe or three months to get from New York to China.
We can no longer just be dependent on our neighbors, we are influenced by not just the people in the next state or a state 3,000 miles away, but by people in countries 10,000 miles away.
How can a single State deal with that? It takes a Federal structure!
FEMA – Romney is (or was until last week) against federal assistance to states in an emergency.
Romney and Tea Party Want Much Smaller Federal Government
Romney and the Tea Party want a much smaller federal govt. Great in principle if this was 1890, but not in practice this century.
What they ignore is the difference between the U.S. of 1890 when 90 percent of people worked on farms, or 1930 when the world had a disaster which even then a single state couldn’t address.
Think back to what it was really like before we had an effective federal government.
In the 30’s we had Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker, Machine Gun Kelley, and all those gangsters who were free to rob and kill because “states rights” meant no law enforcement could pursue them across the state line, or often, even county lines.
9 Out of 10 People Still Live on a Farm Or Rural Area?
If 9 out of 10 people still live on a farm or rural area as I still do, then states rights might be a very appropriate way to run the country.
I know my local mayor, I saw him at the supermarket last week and we exchanged greetings.
But today most people live in big cities. Often in a city which overwhelms the entire surrounding state in terms of population and economics. If the city goes down for some reason, can the few remaining small towns and farmers really provide the assistance they need? Ridiculous.
Hurricane Sandy Disaster
This recent disaster to New Jersey shows how silly the concept of leaving all disaster relief to the states actually is. This simply isn’t something which a single state can cope with.
Romney says we see an ever increasing role of the Federal Govt. Absolutely! But we also see an extremely different country and world!
Federal management and coordination means that pollution from one state doesn’t blanket all the states to the East of it.
Federal management means that 4 lane highways actually meet at state borders.
Federal management means that a disaster to New Jersey and NYC is spread across the entire population just as the benefits from having those areas highly productive for the past century benefited the entire country.
Romney and Tea Party Want to Curb The Federal Government
They completely ignore the fact that local policies and events now affect not just the local community, not even the U.S., but the entire planet!
This is the UNITED States of America. I had relatives die to enforce that idea.
The battle to really put UNITED into that was bloody and long but was fought two centuries ago and, the South lost.
This is Now a Union of States
It is time for the south to finally give it up. You folks lost. This is now a Union of States. That means that everyone is in the same boat and if some are poking holes in the hull while others are trying to fix the pumps, we will get nowhere but sunk.
