The Liberation of the Commoners

                      The Liberation of the Commoners

                Published in Marietta Daily Journal Sept. 18, 2016

            Amongst so-called common folks there is a wisdom that confounds the wise.  I saw it while growing up.  Why, I wondered, were the uneducated farmers up and down our graveled county road so smart?  Why were they so content and constantly at peace with themselves and their world?

            I’m thinking of at least ten men, all of whom were landowners, and their happy families.  My father wasn’t among that ten.  A tenant farmer, he often worked for one or more of them.  But he was their peer as far as smarts, a happy family, and a life of contentment were concerned.

            During that time, President Eisenhower smiled down on the nation, and his successor, President Kennedy, lent the nation idealism and vision.  Post- World War II prosperity was sprouting, along with a new spirit, even though the Korean conflict, segregation, and the looming Vietnam era cast their shadow.

            The ten men I’ve referred to were men of faith.  They were neither rich nor poor.   All of them voted and regularly discussed politics and public policy.  They took pride in their land which they often referred to as their “place.”

            As an older teenager, I concluded, rightly or wrongly, that the satisfaction I saw in these men came from their faith, their land, and their labor.  Land and labor, of course, was more than soil and sweat.  It was food, family, and fellowship.  It was also identity.

            Most of the era I’m referring to pre-dated LBJ’s Great Society, Carter’s Department of Education that enabled G.W. Bush’s overreaching reshape of education, and Obama’s Affordable Care Act.  Because this era predated these and other big government programs, there  was plainly less regulation and more liberty.

            Have we noticed that free people are inventive, ingenious, productive, and happy?  And that slaves, peasants, and victims of bureaucracy are not?  Yes, it was religious and economic liberty that produced the joy in our little corner of the county which, incidentally, was called the Liberty Community.

            But Liberty Community was also peopled with carpenters, welders, house painters, bricklayers, and store owners.  I’m persuaded that this hardworking “class” of people amongst whom I grew up and to whom I owe so much, are the grandfathers of many of Donald Trump’s supporters.

            No wonder their hardworking grandchildren have been engaged by Trump’s words.  Consider what Trump said to the Detroit Economic Club: “American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring.  We will put new American metal into the spine of the nation.  American hands will rebuild this country and American energy – mined from American sources – will power it.  Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo.”

            “Steel,” “spine of the nation,” “American,” “hands,” and “new credo” are powerful, emotional words.  They may not inspire lobbyists, D.C. bureaucrats, or Cable TV talking heads, but they certainly excite Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and other such commoners who build our houses, transport our food, police our cities, and repair our plumbing.

            It is such commoners who still have the common sense that our political class has let slip.  It is the “deplorables” who are confounding the political consultants, the party leaders, and CNN.  How can commoners support a billionaire, they ask.  Because they like what he says and do not like how liberal and conservative elites alike are characterizing them.

            Long before Hillary Clinton labeled half of Trump’s supporters a basket of deplorables, President Obama warned one of his audiences about Americans who “cling to guns and religion.”  That wouldn’t have set well with those farmers whose practical wisdom shaped my life.

            Time Magazine’s Joe Klein recently called Trump’s supporters an “idiot fringe of half crazed, disgraceful, barbaric racists and hatemongers.”  (Newt Gingrich, Mike Pence, James Dobson, Rudy Giuliani, and Phil Robertson?)  And we thought Trump could throw zingers.

            Donald Trump has given the working class a voice.  Leaders of both parties and their political consultants are nervous.  The Trump phenomenon is an apt comparison and parallel to the Brexit vote in Britain.  52% of British voters opted to exit the Brussels-based European Union.  Like America’s political class, Britain’s political and business leaders are aghast that voters said “Enough!”  Britain’s victorious common folks expressed unequivocally their preference for their own flag and fiscal policy over that of the European Union, especially regarding immigration.

            Brexit was the middle class’s kick in the seat of Britain’s leadership.  Trumpism is sending the same message in America.

            The independent-minded farmers for whom my father and I worked would stand with Britain and America’s commoners.  They too favored localism, not the tyranny of centralization or the regulatory state.

Roger Hines

9/14/16