Radical Right Reality Check

New Year’s resolutions for the right wing

By Rob Schofield

In the spirit of the season, this edition of Radical Right Reality Check offers our take on some traditional New Year’s resolutions and how they might be of use to our friends on the ideological right (and maybe even to a few progressives as well).

#1 – Stop Smoking or, at least, stop making excuses for it. According to the North Carolina Alliance for Health, secondhand smoke kills as many as 2,180 North Carolinians each year. Not surprisingly, bans on smoking in public places produce a list of health benefits and cost savings that is as long as your arm.

Last year, however, “conservative” politicians and advocacy groups helped derail legislation in the North Carolina General Assembly that would have saved many lives and millions (billions?) of dollars by following the lead of several other states and banning smoking in public accommodations and workplaces. The stated reason for their opposition? “Freedom.” As in, it’s an impingement on “freedom” when public rules limit the ability of restaurant owners to permit smoking on their premises.

Say what? Is it an impingement on “freedom” when public health rules prevent restaurant owners from serving spoiled meat or having a glue sniffing section? As it so often does, the right wing has confused freedom of the individual with the pursuit of profit. 

2008 Resolution for the right wing: To join with health advocates in enacting a modern anti-smoking law that protects the privacy rights of individuals in their own homes and the health of the public at large in public places.   

#2 – Lose some weight. The more we learn, the more it becomes undeniable that a huge proportion of what ails both the U.S. and North Carolina is a byproduct of our insatiable collective appetite to consume. Whether it’s supersized burgers, giant gas guzzling vehicles, massive energy hogging “McMansions,” or the giant tracts of open space and natural habitats that we pave over and/or poison in the rush to make the first three items possible, humans are precipitating an environmental crisis that seems increasingly likely to have catastrophic implications.

To which the far right replies: “Chill out man. Let’s party!” Global warming? “C’mon that’s just a conspiracy concocted by environmentalists and Al Gore to micromanage everyone’s life. Turn up the air conditioner.” Public transportation and urban planning? “Ditto.” War in the Middle East and America’s unpopularity in the world? “Hey, we’re just confronting evil. These things have nothing to do with our consumption patterns back home.” Land transfer taxes or impact fees that might provide public institutions with some of the resources they need to meet the demands of rapidly growing population? “Another assault on freedom.”

Strange, isn’t it, how it’s modern “conservatives” who seem to be the truest ideological heirs to the hedonistic self-centeredness that was once the supposed province of “spoiled” baby boomers during the 60’s and 70’s?

2008 resolution for the right wing: Park that Hummer and join with those who care about the future of the planet and work to rapidly expedite a blend of technological innovations and conservation policies that give the planet’s biosphere a chance.  

#3 – Pay off debts and invest in the future. Speaking of self-discipline, here’s another area in which supposed conservatives long ago abandoned their erstwhile principles in favor of today’s tax cuts uber alles brand of casino capitalism.

Ever since the ascendance of so-called “supply side” theory – what the first George Bush once called “voodoo economics” – the right wing has aggressively advanced federal, state and local policies that make cutting taxes the one and only top priority for government. The result, of course, has been (except during the Clinton interregnum) a more or less permanent state of public fiscal crisis.

Government can’t adequately fund essential services (i.e. education, care for the sick and disabled, public safety, environmental protection, etc…) and, not surprisingly, faith in public institutions erodes. The result is the self-fulfilling disaster hoped for by right wing, anti-government zealots like Grover Norquist: a government that has been weakened and reduced “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Here in North Carolina, the infatuation with irresponsible tax cuts continues to afflict prominent politicians of both parties even as many of the state’s public schools and mental health institutions fall scandalously behind.

All of which leads to the question: “How long will it take for the public to remember that there’s nothing “conservative” about tax cuts that mortgage our children’s future?”

2008 resolution for the right wing: To acknowledge that the wealthiest 1% of the population could finance most, if not all, of the deficits that plague our national and state governments without any appreciable deterioration in their lifestyles.     

#4 – Get a better education. Of all of the public policy “disconnects” in modern North Carolina, there is none more blatant or dispiriting than the one that exists in the arena of public education.

At the “macro” level, just about everyone agrees that educating our children and future workers is society’s number one collective priority. At the “micro” level, parents of means will bear any burden and fight virtually to the death to assure that their children go to only the finest, nearest and most conveniently scheduled public school. And yet, when the time comes to blend those admirable instincts in order to assure that every child receives the best possible public education, the discussion changes.

Especially in recent years, with the confluence of the far right’s well-funded campaign to demonize all that is public and to transform every government service into a commodity that is to be purchased and consumed rather than shared, the idea of sacrifice for the common good is quickly lost.

The result in North Carolina is today’s divided education system in which a relatively small group of mostly well-off kids does great, a large middle group gets by and a shockingly large group fails completely. To think that we can solve such a massive and critical problem by cutting “waste” and turning things over to “market forces” and charter schools is fantasy of the highest order.

2008 resolution for the right wing: That they join in encouraging all North Carolinians of means to devote half the passion they bring to the educational circumstances of their own children to the educational system as a whole.         

#5 – Take a trip – preferably outside of the southeastern U.S. As even folks on the extreme right are beginning to acknowledge, North Carolina is no longer the small, rural state it once was. Today, more than nine-million people call North Carolina home. By 2030, the number is likely to exceed 12 million and place the state seventh or eight in the country.

Despite this remarkable growth and the world’s rapidly integrating economy, North Carolinians of all political stripes (but particularly on the far right) continue to make and urge decisions based upon how the state compares to its southeastern neighbors. From income tax rates to education spending to business subsidies to Medicaid services to the doggone lottery and everything in between, the question asked is always this: “Well, how do we compare to the rest of the southeast?”

Never it seems, as might often be more appropriate, is the question asked: How do we compare to Connecticut or Wisconsin or, heaven forbid, Germany, Japan or Norway? If North Carolina hopes to compete and advance in the 21^st Century economy, it is essential that its leaders worry less about how the state’s “marginal income tax rate” compares to South Carolina’s or Tennessee’s and set their sites higher.

2008 resolution for the right wing: To learn that while North Carolinians can and should celebrate their history and heritage, it is essential that the state broaden its horizons beyond its narrow geographic region. If we work together, there’s no reason that the state can’t compete and thrive on a global scale.

Who knows? Y’all might find that a little caring for others mixed with a measure of fiscal discipline, self-sacrifice and thinking outside the box is just what the doctor ordered. Let’s work together to make 2008 a great year.    

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Radical Right Reality Check. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.