Empty Places

How does someone so vacuous as Gail Collins get to be a columnist for the New York Times? Is hers what passes for intellect in New York these days? She has a column, reprinted in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News, trying to make the point that "the tea party is so Empty Places (sic) and "Texas [is] the  New Empty (sic). Unlike people who live in crowded places like New York Texans "don't see the point" of having a government "that sets boundaries on public behavior, protects [us] from burglars and cleans the streets.

I have lived in Texas forty years now so most of the people I know are Texans. It might surprise Ms Collins that all of the Texans I know do indeed expect government to set boundaries on public behavior, protect us from burglars, and clean the streets. I don't own a gun. I don't think I need one for protection, that's what we have police for. Two years ago when a trip line came up in the sidewalk in front of my house I called the city and they came out and fixed it. I don't even mind paying my homeowner's taxes. They aren't that high.

It is Ms Collins who misses the point. The tea party is objecting to government excess; excessive spending, debt, and regulation. I'm not necessarily a tea party supporter but I have to agree with them to some degree. Government, at least at the federal level has grown too big, too expensive, and too intrusive.

My parish is a member of Dallas Area Interfaith, an organization that advocates for community issues including funding for more police officers in Dallas. DAI has an iron rule; never, ever do something for someone when they can do it themselves. Catholics call it the principle of subsidiarity; decisions and actions should be taken at the lowest level competent to take them, individual, family, community, state, or what ever. Individuals cannot effectively police their neighbors. That is a city responsibility. Air quality affects everyone and should be regulated at the highest level practical. Reasonable men and women can disagree on exactly when that regulation becomes excessive. Organizations like DAI and the tea party are formed quite properly so that like minded citizens can try to influence government policy. But individuals decide for themselves where to live, whether and whom to marry, what career to pursue. Parents have primary responsibility for educating their children, and should have more say than they often do in where and what they are taught.

Ms Collins is engaged in blatant Texas and tea party bashing. She contributes nothing to the discussion of the underlying issues. The editors of the New York Times and the Dallas Morning News know all this. Publishing this drivel ill  becomes both newspapers. That they sometimes print reciprocal sarcasm from the right doesn't provide balance. It only contributes to the  incivility.

The sad part is that we do have serious issues to discuss and the discussion is being lost in a shouting match. Whether the subject is the scourge of abortion, the tragic rise in single parent households, a dysfunctional conflict between the rights of citizens and the common good, a maddening increase in poverty in our community, the dehumanizing effect of joblessness, the unprecedented challenges of globalization, or the very real dangers seven billion people present to the planet, there are things we really ought to be thinking through. The sort of punditry set out by Ms Collins and her ilk from left and right is less than helpful.

We should expect better from a media we once respected. I don't know where the conversation we need is going to come from but it isn't likely to come from them.