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Streetcar Line
Happenings in the Hinterlands
Americans show civic virtue. But you have to get out of Washington to understand that.
(Page 2 of 2)
The Washington Post editorial page, mirabile dictu, has repeatedly blasted Democrats for inaction and demagoguery on Medicare and other matters. Sure, the Post remains editorially liberal (and its news pages and headlines are more liberal still), but it is the constructive and mostly fair-minded center-leftism that marked the New Republic during most of the 1990s. Somehow, the Post’s thoughtfulness seems to give hope that not all is lost, and that bipartisan statesmanship is at least possible.
For numerous reasons I meant to describe in this column — including some having much to do with national policy and politics — living in the D.C. area is, in quotidian ways, worse than ever. Yet this column, taking on a life of its own, won’t go there today. What this column, writing itself against my original intentions, wants to stress is that here in the hinterlands, we — all of you — do matter. State attorneys general, responding to the voters, are challenging Obamacare. Parents and charter school organizations are taking education into their own commonsensical hands. You, all who make time for real community action, are making Washington listen, and you are doing it with better humor than official Washington wants to credit you for.
A good and decent American people cares about its heritage of freedom. And if in Washington the politics is too much with everybody, late and soon, the truth is that the rest of the nation has proved it can fit productive politics a little more into its daily life of honest work and school carpools and soccer practices and church attendance. We all should continue to work politics — or, rather, to work good citizenship, which includes political volunteerism — into our lives, in the right (modest) doses and the right perspective.
This is the Madisonian ideal of constitutional citizenship.
“Who are the best keepers of the people’s liberties?” Madison asked in the National Gazette on Dec. 22, 1792 . He answered, “The people themselves. The sacred trust can be no where so safe as in the hands most interested in preserving it…. [T]he people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it, as well as obey it.”
As usual, Madison was right. Americans are proving him right anew, and out here away from the Beltway is just the right place to advance the sacred civic cause.
About the Author
Quin Hillyer is a senior editor of The American Spectator and a senior fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom. Follow him on Twitter @QuinHillyer.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (15) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 6.3.11 @ 6:41AM
And in the American *flyover country*, people are beginning to stop whining *Why doesnt somebody DO something?* and realizing that they themselves are Somebody and looking for something to do. I have had Canadian friends who are now living in America tell me with surprise that they have been invited to dinner and events by people who work with them, and people on the streets and in church speak to them, introduce themselves, and invite them to coffee hour and other events. I lived in Canada 13 years before anybody ever invited me to her home. America is still America -- more Americans need to put down their binkies and look around and realize this. The people in the tornado-hit areas are witness to American generosity and impulse to help; we do not hear the squalling that came from Democrat-riddled New Orleans and that is keeping people in FEMA trailers long after the world has moved on -- in flyover country people are showing up with tools, pickup trucks and muscles and saying, *What can we do to help?* and things are getting done. So we hear little about it from the press, because there is nothing to blame on nobody -- instead the press is fixated on Congressional WeeWeeGate.
Look around you and be thankful that you live in a country where people still control their own destiny. Then get out there and do it.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.3.11 @ 6:59AM
Welcome home, Quin.
Amen, Appleby!
Quin, perhaps all you need now is a callous remover for your soul and spirit.
Get out and go to a little league game...
oldfart| 6.3.11 @ 7:23AM
“Stuff happens because so many big egos are trying to make things happen, and if you just hang around long enough, those things will happen while you're there. Then you get a big ego too, and when you try to make things happen you're as likely as not to make the wrong thing happen -- in ways that backfire not as much on you as on so many other people outside of the Beltway whose lives are affected by the policy changes or storylines created by your own bull-in-china-shop routine. “
Some people 'inside the beltway' honestly believe that if they are not at the switch 24/7 then the world will stop rotating. You see it on I495/ I270 and I95 every day – on the blackberry, on the laptop, at the kids games, at the theater.
You have left ego-land and are now back to the real world. Congrats.
roadmaster| 6.3.11 @ 8:08AM
Last week I was proud to take off work for a couple hours to sit in the Federal Court House with an Iraqi co-worker who was taking his oath of citizenship. My friend was a senior NCO in Saddam's Republican Guard and after the 1st Gulf War, his life wasn't worth a bucket of warm spit, so he sought asylum in Jordan and eventually immigrated to the US.
Knowing and understanding tyranny, he appreciates liberty and freedom and wanted to become one of us. He doesn't take these precious things for granted, like so many native born citizens do. Hopefully, Obama's criminal, imperial reign of terror will awaken many, before it's too late.
Petronius| 6.3.11 @ 8:52AM
D.C. has become a rats nest of power grubbing despots. The people who go into government are on personal missions to force their ways on us all. And when they get whatever diktat they want enshrined as law, they then try to criminalize our displeasure. Freedom is all but dead for the citizens in this country except for those who have sufficient wealth that they can't be controlled. Ask the poor guy being persecuted and denied due process for selling a few rabbits without a federal license. He's been fined $90,000 by a bureaucrat without any trial. And he cannot win because he has all the risk. Does he get any sympathy? No. And this years' graduates, having no prospects in the private sector view the 6 figure salaries from the feds almost as attractive as the authority to pick up the phone and push people around.
Quin When Alabama is ready to secede, drop me a line.
SamVaughn| 6.3.11 @ 9:55AM
This column reminded me of the saga of a small coastal island community.
http://www.islandinstitute.org/long_island.php
Suffice it to say that after years of enduring the burdens of ever increasing taxes a small island composed of mostly lobsterman and fishermen took matters into their own hands as they are prone to do when confronted with weather or danger. Enduring the slings and arrows of high and mighty "rulers" in Portland who portrayed them as too dumb and lazy to run their own affairs they endured, they seceded. They set an example of courage and perserverance that many "from away" said didn't exist in the proud state of Maine. They've been told by outsiders for so long that they're dumb and lazy they began almost to believe it themselves. Almost, and that goes for the rest of fly-over country. We don't need Washington, when our neighbors are in trouble we help them in our own private ways, with our pick-ups, with our own chain-saws, with money we don't have, because even the neighbor that drives us nuts would be missed. We don't need Washington in our daily lives nor do you.
simon templar| 6.3.11 @ 10:14AM
Quin, I was very moved by your article. You are indeed a good man and a patriot. I apologize for being too hard on you in the past and being too contentious at times. Good luck and best wishes to you.
Quin| 6.3.11 @ 10:38AM
Simon,
Thank you so much. That is very kind of you, good sir. Much appreciated.
Occam's Tool| 6.3.11 @ 1:55PM
Dear Quinn,
G-d Bless and take care---and Ruth's Chris is in Mobile! Have a steak, and enjoy being in a State with fantastic people. My wife will be in Gulf Shores later this month. It is a very small world.
uncle curmudgeon| 6.3.11 @ 12:35PM
Welcome back, oh refugee. Once you get settled in, go on downtown and look at all the petty tyrants, quacks, and hustlers that, in your abscence, have metastisized around "The Square" thanks to fedl gubmint grants. Then use the your considerable skills to help you friends and neighbors run them all out of town. I look forward to reading your futer columns.
chriser| 6.3.11 @ 10:44PM
Quin,
Welcome back to God's country .
War Eagle!
Oldefarte| 6.4.11 @ 11:52AM
Wait a minute now....I've got to counter with ROOOOLLLLLLLLL TIDE! Quin, as long as %%YOU LEFT YOUR HEART IN ALABAMA%%, you no doubt were here all along. DC/yankees just don't GET IT and never will, as they asininely think that they created the political world, and that the rest of us are Gumpish bafoons [it is they who don't understand Gump' genius in proclaiming STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES!]. Welcome home, Quin....we all missed you! Realistically though, as long as technology/computers/radios/television etc exists [and conservative writers, talk show commentators such as Quin, Hannity, Rush & David, Ingram, Beck etc] are able to communicate their intelligent conservative ideas/thoughts to the rest of us, we will all survive [no matter from what distant locale same initiates from]!!!!!!!!!!!
Arch| 6.5.11 @ 9:27AM
Great article
In 2006, I too traded up, swapping Clinton and Schumer for Shelby and Sessions. It's great to be home again where people smile wave at each other. It's great to see that the most popular decals are Auburn and Alabama closely followed by the Browning Buckmark.
Welcome back.
Steve B | 6.5.11 @ 10:52AM
I haven't spent as much time in Washington as you, but my experience (three months as the world's oldest intern via the National Journalism Foundation) tends to confirm what you say.
Nowadays I'm a local government reporter in a three-county area in SW Minnesota. Most of what I cover concerns local officials who have jobs other than their office trying to find ways to keep the roads and infrastructure in good repair, fund law enforcement and a modest degree of social welfare services, and deal with natural calamities such as floods.
It all makes Washington seem somehow unreal, like the memory of a weekend at a Renaissance Fair.
dee see| 6.5.11 @ 11:18AM
--It'd be nice if they showed a little civic virtue
regarding the reality of third generation EUGENISTS directing our entire medical establishment ---while handing our entire
American economy to the most awesomely
genocidal regime history has ever seen.
REALLY --------------it'd be nice.