The revolution in Egypt, following the example of Tunisia just weeks before, showed once again the power of individuals fired by a powerful idea whose time had come. By the time it had made the international news, the revolution had swelled into the millions flocking into Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and, as the old cliché goes, the Middle East will never be the same.
Today’s New York Times had a front page story on the two or three individuals who worked with their counterparts in Tunisia and Bosnia before that to foment and spark the Egyptian revolution. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14egypt-tunisia-protests.html?hp
But, who were those others before them who helped create the tipping point that made the revolutions in Tunisia and Eqypt eventually possible? We’ll never know them by name, but they made a difference. Just as we’ll never know the unnamed individuals who paved the way for Rosa Parks whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Bus Strike and the burgeoning civil rights movement. Parks was not the first to stand up for her rights under the same circumstances, but she became the tipping point that released a pent up frustration that finally spilled over into action.
The movement actually started decades before, as described by Isabel Wilkerson in her Pulitzer-Prize winning The Warmth of Other Suns, with the great migration of Blacks escaping the Jim Crow South before World War I and continuing until 1970. Some six million Blacks who left the South over those six decades, hoping to find freedom in the North and West, ended up being bitterly disappointed, but they changed the social, political, and economic face of America and helped create the climate for Brown v Board of Education, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement.
Again, except for those few individuals singled out in The Warmth of Other Suns, we’ll never know by name those brave souls who at the risk of their lives were the first to pick up and head into an unknown North and West to escape what had finally become intolerable. But, they were critical to the gradual evolution of America.
So, when we start thinking that it’s impossible for one person to make a difference, we are reminded of stories like the one my long-time friend Jim Burns sent me recently. It’s about a freshman in high school who sees a new, geeky kid on the block being bullied and comes to help him out and befriends him. During high school, they became fast friends and at their graduation ceremony, the geeky kid, who is the class valedictorian, told the story of his friend who came to his rescue years before. He went on to say he was headed home to kill himself that same day, but this single act of courage and kindness changed his mind.
None of us may ever have the chance to make that level of difference in another person’s life, but we can all make a difference in our own small way. As George Eliot observed in her masterful novel Middlemarch:
“For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Gerald E. Lavey
Monday, February 14, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Can Washington Change?
Unless my political instincts have gone totally haywire, I detect a more respectful, civil tone in Washington political discourse since the off-year elections. Certainly, the worrisome Egyptian situation the last few weeks has helped focus Washington’s attention and, to their credit, members of the political opposition in Congress have largely held their fire and deferred to the White House’s direction on this sensitive matter. It’s the first time in a while I can recall where politics stopped at the water’s edge in a major foreign policy crisis.
But, I would submit that the increased comity began before the Egyptian crisis erupted. Not surprising, in one sense, given that voters in last November’s election told Washington politicians to start acting like adults and begin working together. Much as some would still like to paint the election results as primarily a referendum on “Obamacare,” which the Republicans made the centerpiece of their campaign, the election results tell a different story. Those who oppose the health care legislation and those who support it are almost evenly divided, with a slight edge to opponents, although a percentage of those who opposed it didn’t think it went far enough.
President Obama apparently got the point about cooperation and has bent over backwards to reach compromises, as he did during the lame duck session, even surrendering on the key issue of a two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthy. It was a huge price — some would say unconscionable price – and the issue will come up again when the current extension expires early in the next Presidential election cycle – but it seems to have paid off, at least in terms of increased cooperation in the short term.
As expected, the House Republicans still went through with the pro forma action of repealing the health care legislation, knowing the Senate would reject it and, if it ever made it through the Senate, President Obama would have his veto pen at the ready. Now, if a spirit of cooperation holds -- which admittedly is giant leap of faith, if not downright naïve on my part — they can start working to eliminate parts of the health care legislation which even supporters agree should be discarded.
More troubling are the actions by courts in a few states declaring the legislation unconstitutional because of the so-called individual taxpayer mandate. Ultimately, the issue will be decided by the Supreme Court, it seems, which makes me nervous, considering the decision the Roberts court made in the Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission case where they ruled that corporate contributions cannot be limited under the First Amendment. Fortunately, Senator McCaskill and others are looking to find a substitute for the controversial taxpayer mandate that might accomplish much the same result.
The other key issue where cooperation will be much harder to come by are spending cuts. Ironically, the major struggle for the new House Republican leadership may be within its own ranks. The large percentage of newly elected members, riding the Tea Party wave, are calling for much deeper cuts than the traditional Republicans, like House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, are willing to countenance. This might force the Republican leadership to collaborate with their Democratic counterparts to gain the necessary votes for any kind of effective legislative action.
And, finally, on this 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday, a word about those who paint themselves as his disciples. Sarah Palin and Grover Norquist, to cite just two prominent examples, extol Reagan for being the champion of tax cuts. They, especially Norquist, would cut taxes back dramatically in an effort to reduce the size of government, to the point where he once famously said, he wanted “to shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Reagan wouldn’t recognize this caricature of himself and would shudder at being associated with tax cuts espoused by some of his so-called disciples. He soon realized, for example, that his 1981 tax cuts blew a much bigger hole in the budget than he estimated and over the remaining years of his Presidency raised taxes 11 times, somehow never drawing the far Right’s ire, although his successor George H.W. Bush lost a huge amount of Republican support in the 1992 election because he reneged once on his so-called “Read My Lips” pledge not to raise taxes. Go figure.
Where does this leave things? The sanguine, Candide-type side of me would like to think that Washington could start working together a lot more cooperatively than it has in the recent past. After all, it’s not rocket science. But, sad to say, watching the mean-spirited political atmosphere that has taken over Washington the last several years now, the skeptical realist in me wouldn’t bet serious money on that becoming a habit any time soon.
Gerald E. Lavey
But, I would submit that the increased comity began before the Egyptian crisis erupted. Not surprising, in one sense, given that voters in last November’s election told Washington politicians to start acting like adults and begin working together. Much as some would still like to paint the election results as primarily a referendum on “Obamacare,” which the Republicans made the centerpiece of their campaign, the election results tell a different story. Those who oppose the health care legislation and those who support it are almost evenly divided, with a slight edge to opponents, although a percentage of those who opposed it didn’t think it went far enough.
President Obama apparently got the point about cooperation and has bent over backwards to reach compromises, as he did during the lame duck session, even surrendering on the key issue of a two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthy. It was a huge price — some would say unconscionable price – and the issue will come up again when the current extension expires early in the next Presidential election cycle – but it seems to have paid off, at least in terms of increased cooperation in the short term.
As expected, the House Republicans still went through with the pro forma action of repealing the health care legislation, knowing the Senate would reject it and, if it ever made it through the Senate, President Obama would have his veto pen at the ready. Now, if a spirit of cooperation holds -- which admittedly is giant leap of faith, if not downright naïve on my part — they can start working to eliminate parts of the health care legislation which even supporters agree should be discarded.
More troubling are the actions by courts in a few states declaring the legislation unconstitutional because of the so-called individual taxpayer mandate. Ultimately, the issue will be decided by the Supreme Court, it seems, which makes me nervous, considering the decision the Roberts court made in the Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission case where they ruled that corporate contributions cannot be limited under the First Amendment. Fortunately, Senator McCaskill and others are looking to find a substitute for the controversial taxpayer mandate that might accomplish much the same result.
The other key issue where cooperation will be much harder to come by are spending cuts. Ironically, the major struggle for the new House Republican leadership may be within its own ranks. The large percentage of newly elected members, riding the Tea Party wave, are calling for much deeper cuts than the traditional Republicans, like House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, are willing to countenance. This might force the Republican leadership to collaborate with their Democratic counterparts to gain the necessary votes for any kind of effective legislative action.
And, finally, on this 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday, a word about those who paint themselves as his disciples. Sarah Palin and Grover Norquist, to cite just two prominent examples, extol Reagan for being the champion of tax cuts. They, especially Norquist, would cut taxes back dramatically in an effort to reduce the size of government, to the point where he once famously said, he wanted “to shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Reagan wouldn’t recognize this caricature of himself and would shudder at being associated with tax cuts espoused by some of his so-called disciples. He soon realized, for example, that his 1981 tax cuts blew a much bigger hole in the budget than he estimated and over the remaining years of his Presidency raised taxes 11 times, somehow never drawing the far Right’s ire, although his successor George H.W. Bush lost a huge amount of Republican support in the 1992 election because he reneged once on his so-called “Read My Lips” pledge not to raise taxes. Go figure.
Where does this leave things? The sanguine, Candide-type side of me would like to think that Washington could start working together a lot more cooperatively than it has in the recent past. After all, it’s not rocket science. But, sad to say, watching the mean-spirited political atmosphere that has taken over Washington the last several years now, the skeptical realist in me wouldn’t bet serious money on that becoming a habit any time soon.
Gerald E. Lavey
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