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Before we address the leading issue of the 1996 campaign
for the highest secular office available to mortals, want
to put in a plug for a good book. Many books are touted as
summer reading
-- this one is Labor Day
reading.
The book is The Great Coalfield War,
a thorough
and quite readable account of the Ludlow Massacre of 1914.
The cast includes two John D. Rockefellers and Mother
Jones, and the plot involves political corruption and a
full-bore shooting war in Colorado's Huerfano and Las
Animas counties. And it's a true story.
The Great Coalfield War
was long out of print,
and University Press of Colorado just resurrected it. If
you've ever been curious about Ludlow, get it, and you can
read all about the days when the conventional wisdom was
It takes a company town to raise a child who can go to
work in the mines when he's orphaned at 12 after dad died
in an underground explosion which was his own
fault.
Which brings us to the campaign issue: It takes a
village to raise a child.
The saying has been floating around for years. I've heard that it was a Greek proverb, a Mexican adage and an African saying, so I have no idea where it came from.
Anyway, Hillary Rodham Clinton engages a ghost writer,
issues a book by that title, gets attacked in Bob Dole's
acceptance speech at the Republican convention, and
gallantly responds with Chicago, my kind of village
at the Democratic convention.
Controversy always helps book sales, but this one has also inspired some speculation. Let's start with a village -- some isolated rural backwater where people just go about their lives. Since everybody knows everybody, everybody keeps an eye on the kids as they wander around.
Now, imagine the transformations of this village.
The Democratic Village: Upon the discovery that some
children are swiping apples, a nutrition counselor sets up
shop, and begins inspecting family dinners to make sure
that no child should be in such hunger that s/he is
forced to forage from the countryside.
Then someone notices that kids are hanging out in
workplaces, which means more inspectors and enforcers.
There's nothing noble about a boy shagging tools at the
local garage. It's child labor, nothing less than
exploitation. And this workplace is not a safe environment
-- there's an ever-present risk of injury. Further, the
calendars on the wall are sexist and demeaning.
Soon the workplaces have Children not allowed
signs. But now there's a recreation coordinator at the
village green. Some kids skip out to sneak cigarettes
behind the village barn, but under the 100,000 new
cops
program, there are enough police to round them up
and force them to participate.
In a few years, the original village residents are outnumbered by social workers, therapists, counselors, inspectors, snoops and meddlers. It's not a village any more, and thus beyond this speculation.
The Republican Village: A developer arrives and is horrified by the presence of the village commons on the edge of town, where the locals graze a few cattle and gather firewood.
This is nothing but socialism,
the developer
says, and pulls strings in the statehouse to get title to
the commons. There he starts construction of a strip mall,
full of franchise outlets which export their profits and
hire very few village natives.
The core of the village begins to decay, and a criminal
element appears. We can solve this problem, and improve
our economy,
the developer says, by building a
state-of-the-art maximum-security prison in the village
square. That land's worthless now anyway.
The new prison requires a new highway, which puts the village within commuting range of the metropolis, so upscale residential developments begin to ooze across the countryside, and it's not a village any more.
The Green Village: Many residents move after being fined for failing to separate their clear glass from brown glass, but otherwise, things don't change much.
The Libertarian Village: They do fine until some greedhead arrives, who starts overgrazing the commons and clear-cutting the woods. When the residents protest, he says they are infringing on his rights.
In Sunday's column, I noted that big-time candidates don't visit the hinterlands these days.
However, I just heard that Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian candidate for vice-president this year, will venture deep into the Colorado backcountry today. She's speaking at the Adams State College campus in Alamosa from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., and a reception and dinner are planned this evening.
You can ask her if I'm wrong about the Libertarian Village.
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