[lit-ideas] Re: Feeling Safe isn't safe
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 21:34:29 -0700
You continue to mistake our government for a European sort of Paternalism
rather than a manifestation of what the people want. People wanted free
land. The government merely regulated their desire. The government never
had anything that was not the people's. You aren't able to leave your
Leftist-Pacifistic fantasy even to spend the briefest time in reality are
you? A pity.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Mike Geary
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 7:44 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Feeling Safe isn't safe
Lawrence reminds me of Alice, the one who said: "If I had a world of my own,
everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything
would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and
what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" Rugged individualism indeed!
Lawrence is the last true believer in Herbert Hoover. God love him, he's
persistently consistent in his madness. Rugged individualism - yes, yes,
that same rugged individualism that won the west! Except, of course, for
the role the US government played, for example there were the massive land
purchases and giveaways, there was the Homestead Act, the Pony Express,
agricultural colleges, rural electrification, telephone wiring,
road-building, irrigation, dam-building, farm subsidies and foreclosure
loans, the name just a few. And of course there's the "rugged
individualism" that historian John Farragher describes as "a community
experience...Sharing work with neighbors at cabin raisings, log rollings,
haying, husking, butchering, harvesting or threshing were all traditionally
considered communal affairs...[A] 'borrowing system' allowed scarce tools,
labor and products to circulate for the benefit of all." One pioneer told
prospective settlers: "Your wheel-barrows, your shovels, your utensils of
all sorts, belong not to yourself, but to the public who do not think it
necessary even to ask a loan, but take it for granted."
Oh, and here's some more about the rugged individualism that Lawrence's
paeans praise so masterfully:
"By the turn of the century, the government had distributed a billion acres
of land, but only 147 million became homesteads. Sociologists Scott and
Sally McNall estimate that "probably only one acre in nine went to the small
pioneers." Some 183 million acres were ultimately given to the railroad
companies. (It was these federal giveaways that created the major logging
companies, not family businesses.) Four out of five transcontinental
railroads were built in this way, and Congress approved loans up to $48,000
per mile to build them.
The West has a rich tradition of dependency on government. As historian
Stephanie Coontz says: "It would be hard to find a Western family today or
at any time in the past whose land rights, transportation options, economic
existence, and even access to water were not dependent on federal funds."
Paradoxically, however, the West has also enjoyed a long tradition of
anti-government sentiments. When John Wayne punched out "Mr. Government
Bureaucrat" in a Hollywood Western, he was acting out the misplaced rage of
many Western Americans."
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-west.htm
Mike Geary
Memphis
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