Romney, Ryan and the Devil's Budget: Will America Keep Its Soul?

[highplainsdem]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/romney-ryan-and-the-devil_b_1819652.html

Romney, Ryan and the Devil's Budget: Will America Keep Its Soul?
George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith
Posted: 08/22/2012 8:22 am


America was born with a great soul, a moral view of Democracy in which citizens care about their fellow citizens and join together to take responsibility not just for themselves but for each other, for America as a union, a joint enterprise. The government's job was to carry out that moral vision and to do so it created what we call The Public, the provision of basic protection and empowerment for all.

From the beginning of America, the Public provided roads and bridges, public schools, hospitals, a national bank, a patent office, police, a justice system, public buildings and records, and more. Since then the Public has expanded as public needs have expanded -- sewers, clean water, public transportation, public health and disease control, scientific research, the internet, GPS, an energy grid, parks, and much, much more.

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What Evil -- with a capital "E" -- would a Devil's Budget do? So far Democrats have been pointing to its cruelty: its horrific effects on individuals -- death, illness, suffering, greater poverty, and loss of opportunity, productive lives, and money. All true and more. But there is a larger and worse overall Evil, one that deserves the capital "E."

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Whatever callously divides communities into sets of disconnected individuals and tries to hide or erase our interdependent humanity, that is what human cultural, religious, literary and folktale traditions have long labelled Evil. We think the Devil's Budget has earned its name.

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Brilliant column. I wish I could quote all of it here.

[hedda_foil]

1. This is SUCH an important read! Thanks for posting.

[dembotoz]

2. no