Grace Ross: Making Up History to Win?

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Grace Ross, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

This whole issue got raised for me a little over a week ago when I got my first piece of campaign literature from the Romney for President campaign.

I try to avoid getting sucked into the huge whirlpool (one could say cesspool, these days) of energy that becomes a vortex around the presidential race because the reality is that regular people have much more impact on local elections, municipal elections and even our state elections than we ever do these days on national politics that are so driven by the wealthiest interests and their money. So I wasn’t going to comment.

Revising History

However, Romney’s piece is full of – fraught with, I suppose – this description of U.S. history that bears little to no resemblance actual history.

It’s not unusual for someone running for high office (I’ve done this myself) to seek historical ground to stand on.

On the tails of this campaign solicitation piece I went this weekend to hear Elizabeth Warren who’s running for the Senate seat this year against Scott Brown and got myself dragged into watching this Sunday television piece that had been getting lots of hype and publicity and the commercials. The teaser for that special drew an analogy to the failing Roman empire and the trouble in the U.S. today.

One can describe the U.S. as an empire right now and ask whether we too shall go the way of all empires that attempt to have world reach.

I didn’t get too far through the TV program. The narrator was strikingly taken by the pilgrims, the Puritans, as they were called in England. That story of their flight for religious reasons played center stage in our childhood history books, but the European settlers in the U.S. came from many sources: The French who had traded and traveled as hunters in the U.S. often building direct relationships with Native Americans; the Spanish conquistadors, conquerors; Columbus who landed first in the Caribbean, the English more traditional colonists farther south than the pilgrims who landed in our Commonwealth.

Roman Empire

Narrator of this TV show was going off on a rant about traditional Christian (his version) values and I suppose was headed into an analysis that the Roman Empire fell because of decadence. The parallels to the Roman Empire are actually much, much stronger than simply a moralistic argument. The Empire had overreached, was using financial resources it didn’t have to try to control vast areas of land, it had inflation, they had unemployment, they had moved to mass production of certain farming goods, etc. so that many people were out of work with nothing to sustain them and the powerful financial elite had become more powerful and more controlling financially and politically. So the parallels are there.

I don’t know his political purposes but those were clearer with Romney and Warren.

Elizabeth Warren shared a concern about the dangers we as a country are headed towards – that we are at a “crossroads” and that is why she is running, She had an in-depth analysis looking at the losses particularly for our younger adults financially and the relatively insurmountable barriers they face toward doing even as well as their parents generation did. She talked frequently of her grandchildren’s generation and her concern for them. Of course at this point, you could be younger and have concerns for seniors whose social security benefits don’t even begin to match up with real (and under-reported) inflation. Honesty would mean naming incredible losses across the board for people of all generations in the housing market and lack of health care access and jobs.

While her analysis is factually correct, there’s some distancing herself from the reality that most of us are facing. I assume unintentionally, but it was not very comforting that she couldn’t name the impact of unemployment, rising healthcare costs, the foreclosure crisis and the degradation of the spending power of anyone dependent on a cost of living increase for their household survival.

Capitalism and Free Enterprise

What was truly striking about the Romney notice was that he said that he wanted to bring us back to American values of capitalism and “free enterprise”.

I don’t know what history books he’s been reading, but what’s absolutely clear is that our values as the colony that became the “cradle of the revolution” were founded in a new attempt at equality, community and democracy. The TV narrator who was hot on the Puritans, was right that the Puritans were truly remarkable in wanting in their Christianity to have a direct relationship with God as a community. They basically blew off the hierarchies, the rich and powerful, to set up their own little enclaves and worship as they saw fit.

A chunk of those values do come forward in our understanding of democracy and the creation of the New England town meeting. For many years long after the Puritan period and coming into the Revolutionary War period town meetings did directly elect their representatives, had a relatively flat form of government; in fact, most people could participate – and more people had the right to participate before the Revolutionary War than after. They had as close to direct representation as they could by only having year long terms for the people they sent to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, often giving them an entire agenda and telling them how they were going to vote on certain issues that were hot topics of the day.

The Revolutionary War came in fact, because England outlawed those town meetings and the judges foreclosing on family farms.

Romney's Take on the Constitution

Even though, mostly the merchant class in Boston wrote the constitution, not the farmers and trades people that made up the vast majority of the Massachusetts colony (including most of present-day Maine) they still spoke eloquently and strongly of the danger of corporations and corporate influence and the influence of the very powerful big moneyed interests. They spoke of the danger that that posed to democracy.
Where does Romney gets his story from? I could only think he makes it up out of whole clothe. We wants to justify the life choices he has made and the lifestyle he’s living. Does he really mean the blatant disregard of the concepts of democracy?

As written in the Worcester Constitution before any bloodshed occurred: we have a birthright to “life, liberty, and the means of sustenance”, not some vast accumulation of wealth. Romney seems to adhere to the interpretation of that third right to property means that obscene accumulation of wealth through the undermining of a government by and for the people is okay.

Romney? Go actually read history: the colonists who were trying to avoid war were talking about the right for everyone to have access to enough land and goods to ensure their survival and the survival of their families.

Now how would do as a value system to build a future on? As opposed to the free reign of the wealthiest corporations not only in our economic spheres, but now in our political spheres?