DeMint’s rhetoric ignores reality

Op-ed by Carol Fowler

As record numbers of South Carolinians struggle to find jobs and keep their homes, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint denigrates the efforts of our government to get our economy moving again, and tries to claim freedom as a value unique to right-wing Republicans.

DeMint was one of the opening speakers Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the American Conservative Union. DeMint, the only U.S. senator to score perfectly on its right-wing agenda, told his listeners to choose their next leader on adherence to their principles.

Let’s start by putting our situation in perspective. We had a budget surplus in 2000 when Republicans took the White House. They set off on a series of misadventures – a war in Iraq, tax cuts for the wealthy and further erosion of regulation. And so it was that last year we watched the economy crash into a ditch.

Voters elected Democrats to get the car back on the road. DeMint and his ilk want to stand on the curb and shout directions to those of us willing to get down in the mud and push.

We will get the economy back on the road, and Democrats believe the market will propel it down the highway. But we will also expect drivers to obey speed limits, and that police will be on the road to protect the law-abiding drivers from the reckless ones. It’s called regulation.

In Friday’s speech, DeMint demonized President Obama “as the world’s best salesman for socialism,” and called for an “enraged” citizenry to take to the streets to stop a “slide into socialism.”
“I am convinced neither the Congress nor the president will preserve freedom,” DeMint said. “Folks, we’re not letting freedom work, but we’re blaming freedom,” he said. “The government is not the answer to our problems. The government is the problem.”

In this, DeMint sounds more like a 19th century anarchist than a supporter of our system of representative democracy. Our freedom is one we choose through elected representatives, a freedom we maintain through law. We the people are we the government.

Outside of the realm of citizens are other powerful forces: other nations and corporations with no national loyalty.

The far right often overlooks how many of our government institutions are designed to protect and foster business. What condition of “freedom” would we have if companies could not enforce contracts by recourse to civil courts, protect their innovations through patents, or raise capital because there was no outside agency such as the Securities and Exchange Commission to verify companies were fully disclosing their financial conditions? Freedom to prosper depends on a structure of justice not just for corporations, but for individuals.

Freedom is something Democrats cherish, too. In 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined four of them: freedom of speech and expression; freedom of every person to worship God in his own way; freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Roosevelt was demonized in his own time by those on the right, and in his Four Freedoms speech he offered some advice on dealing with obstructionists.

“We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests,” Roosevelt said. “The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble-makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and if that fails, to use the sovereignty of government to save government.”

With regard to Sen. DeMint, voters will have that chance in November 2010. Let freedom ring.