Finding common ground

By Darrell Laurant

Published: October 13, 2008

I think I’m seeing something happening here, something good.

Of course, what do I know? I’m just a columnist for a small newspaper in a largely overlooked part of Virginia.

Still, there was the reaction to a column I did last month on a woman named Royal Jones. She had spent more than seven years caring for her father at home because she didn’t want to put him in a nursing home. On the side, she campaigned for state money for people in her position, reasoning that it would be cheaper for the taxpayers than institutionalization.

Jones won that battle, but found herself in dire financial need after her father died during the summer. I wrote how she was in danger of losing her house, and the response was quick and heart-warming. Two people offered to pay a month each of Jones’ mortgage. Others sent small checks, and she received a couple of job offers. A fund was set up for her at the Langhorne Road branch of Bank of America.

A few weeks later, I interviewed leaders of a Lynchburg-based Christian group called Suite 19, which is trying to replicate the example of Jesus Christ by performing service to people in its neighborhood with no strings (or money) attached. Now, I’m picking up on some intriguing aspects of our paper’s “President of Us” balloting (more on that tomorrow).

These are encouraging signs, because I believe this country is suffering from a near-terminal case of selfishness.

It’s not surprising, when you think about it. Most of the immigrants who came here did so because they felt stifled (or threatened) where they were. Others were dragged to America against their will. At the risk of being simplistic (hey, I’m a columnist!), it can be argued our gene pool is dominated by people who were dissatisfied.

Diversity is our strength, because it provides us with a rich blend of cultures found nowhere else. The downside is, we have no common culture, food, religion or philosophy to bind us together — and increasingly, not even a common language. Generally speaking, we tend to go our own way, as localities and individuals.

Thinkers from both the left and the right have identified elements of our current self-centeredness, but each has touched on only part of the problem. Like the angry red line from a serious infection, it runs from the top of our financial pecking order to the bottom.

Much of our current economic mess can be laid at the feet of corporate executives who were more interested in bolstering their own bank accounts than about the welfare of their employees, their company or society as a whole. Horror stories abound of CEO’s pillaging the assets of their firms even as the ship was sinking.

At the other end of the economic spectrum, much of the crime and poverty in our urban areas is due to parents who were too concerned with their own instant gratification to bother parenting.

In either case, there’s little accountability. CEO’s plunder their treasuries and young men impregnate their girlfriends and both ride off into the sunset largely untouched.

Politicians, meanwhile, pander to the most selfish parts of our nature. Elect us, they say, and we promise we won’t raise your taxes, even if the country falls into ruin.

September 11 was a horrible thing, but we use it as the excuse to inflict all manner of violence around the world. Because we can.

Let’s outsource our factory work overseas because that will result in cheaper goods for Americans — and despite all our “Buy American” protestations to the contrary, we still look for the cheapest bargains we can find.

Hey, nobody is forcing those Asians or Africans to work for $5 a day, just as nobody is forcing any of those poor souls to buy crack cocaine on the downtown street corners. That’s their problem.

Health care for everyone? Great idea, but don’t expect any of us to cough up any extra cash.

The Republicans are right when they say that society has learned to depend on the government to take care of everything. The Democrats are right when they say that government has been co-opted by people with satchels full of money.

After all, sang Don Henley, “a man with a briefcase can steal more money than any man with a gun.”

Americans are, at their best, a great and generous people. We’ve just gotten off track somehow, and we can only move forward again together. The engineer can’t do it for us.