While I was spitting out a furious, incoherent rant about the Newtown gun massacre, Charlie Pierce - no less furious than I - was
composing this:
There's also little doubt that the primary heroes of the day were schoolteachers — public school teachers
— who hid children in closets and saved their lives, and who evacuated
the children, leading them out through what had become a killing field
in preposterously good order in what were the last hours of their
childhoods, as one of the teachers said, with devastating accuracy, to a
local TV station. There's also little doubt that the response of the
local police and fire departments in a very small place was prompt and
brave.
When we go on forever on the blog here about the value of a political
commonwealth, and how it is a product of the ongoing creative process
of self-government, this kind of response is what we're talking about.
There are things we must do together, in a political context, because
these things are too big — and, in this case, too monstrous — for us to
handle alone.
Self-government and its institutions — public schools,
police and fire departments, the ridiculously underfunded mental-health
facilities, and all the people to whom we increasingly begrudge their
salaries — are the only things keeping us from falling back into
barbarism, and the only things keeping us safe and sane when one of us
falls back into it on their own.
No comments:
Post a Comment