By Tim Redmond
I was in Washington DC on a cold January day in 1981, when a guy named Ronald Reagan took the oath of office. There was no sense of hope; as many people were marching and shouting to denounce the incoming president as to celebrate him. We marched in the counter-inaugural parade, smoked pot in front of the DEA headquarters, partied in a basement with the Yippies … and it wasn’t until the next day that I actually read Reagan’s speech and saw the words that would change everything for many years to come:
“Government isn’t the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”
That was the official attitude in this country for a long, long time. Even under Clinton, you felt as if everyone in Washington was afraid to be promoting the public sector. Everything was about the indivdual, not the collective; everything was about reducing our dependence on each other.
And now, I think, after that attitude has pretty much wrecked the economy, we may be ready to change.
I listened to Obama’s speech with tremendous exicitement. And in some ways, he hit the right notes:
Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.
Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
But the undertone of all of this — the unspoken words in what was a good, but not exceptional speech — went like this:
The era when government was the problem, not the solution, are over.
Now it’s our turn — our turn to prove that it’s okay to believe in the public sector, our turn to prove that it’s fine to think that eveyone has the right to a place to live, the right to a decent income, the right to health care, the right to a minimal standard of living. It’s our turn to show that the United States can be a place where we ask the richest and most successful to contribute their fair share —
not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
Barack Obama isn’t going to do this alone. He may be able to show the way, he may be able to lead us in the right direction, and he’ll certainly support our best intentions. But it’s up to us now. We’ve waited a long time, we’ve worked our asses off and we’re finally in a position to do something. It’s our turn now. Let’s do it right.