Original source URL: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/a-revolutionary-experience/ A Revolutionary Experience by Richard C. Cook / July 9th, 2007 The fireworks arching high above Market Square in Virginia¹s restored colonial capital of Williamsburg were spectacular. The thundering martial music of the fife and drum corps brought goose bumps. 20,000 or more spectators ‹ tourists and townspeople alike ‹ were orderly but festive. Cars are not allowed on the streets, so pedestrians, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages enjoy a quiet dominion. Through the air wafts the faint odor of burning hardwood from wrought-iron stands, along with the age-old smell of manure. I came back to Williamsburg after retiring from the federal government to stay with my eighty-four year-old mother for a while ‹ she¹s a former tour escort for the Restoration. I¹d attended high school here, then earned a degree through the humanities honors program at the College of William and Mary. My favorite book was Plato¹s Republic, once viewed as a manual for enlightened government in the Western world. The other night I stood outside the low brick wall that surrounds the reconstructed colonial capitol building talking with one of the tour guides about the events of 231 years ago. He told how in the original building the Fifth Virginia Convention had voted 112-0 on May 15, 1776, to instruct the Virginia delegation at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia to enter a motion for independence. Thus Williamsburg always had a good argument for being the ³real² birthplace of the United States of America. After the state capital was moved to Richmond in 1780, the town declined. But important people still lived here. In April 1841, John Tyler was awakened by a horseman who had ridden up to his house on Nicholson Street to tell him he was president of the United States. Tyler had been the running mate of William Henry Harrison, who took sick on his inauguration day and died a few weeks later of pneumonia. By the time of the Civil War, Williamsburg was little more than a shadow. The College of William and Mary shut down during the war when the professors and students joined the Confederate army. Later, when the school closed for lack of funds, former college president Benjamin S. Ewell rang the bell of the Wren Building once a year on the day classes would have started. Eventually William and Mary re-opened as a state teachers¹ institution. The low point came in 1900. The election board in Richmond noticed that Williamsburg had not sent any returns. They phoned the courthouse. Oh, there was an election? We forgot. The town fathers were suitably embarrassed. The newspapers began to call the town ³Lotus-land.² The story of how Williamsburg was rediscovered and restored by the joint efforts of the local Episcopal minister, Reverend W.A.R. Goodwin, and American industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is well-known. Colonial Williamsburg has been around now for eighty years. It has struggled to keep up its visitation in the face of competition from Busch Gardens and Water Country, but still holds its own. Events like the Fourth of July celebration show that Williamsburg really is a critical piece of American lore. But Williamsburg is still part of a larger world. The big news here is that a recent study concluded that 50,000 more workers will be needed to work in the area¹s tourist industry over the next decade. The trouble is that housing is so expensive there¹s nowhere for them to live. What will this well-off community with its hordes of comfortable retirees do? Pay them more than the minimum wage? Not likely, especially since Virginia is a ³right-to-work² state with minimal union representation. Public or subsidized housing? Some, but nowhere near enough for such a large influx. Rent control? No way. A related piece of news is that Ford¹s Colony, a gated community west of downtown, will be using a parcel of land earlier earmarked for a school for new high density ³workforce housing² for teachers, firemen, and the like. The starting price for a home? Only $215,000. So the housing bubble and its aftermath have hit Williamsburg hard. My mother just got her 2008 tax assessment on the modest home she and my father built in 1963. Nationwide, housing prices have been going down during the last year, but not here. The city sent her a thirteen percent one-year increase on her assessment and property tax. I sent the city manager¹s office an e-mail asking what the city will be doing with the additional thirteen percent and what expenses they suggested my mother should cut back on. They sent a polite response that gave the obligatory bow to ³market² forces ‹ a euphemism for nationwide housing inflation ‹ but did not answer my questions. To be fair, Williamsburg¹s tax rate is much lower than the surrounding cities, but the trend mirrors many other U.S. localities where the elderly and local natives are taxed out of their homes. Meanwhile, President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney took time out from prosecuting their Iraq War to visit the Williamsburg area in connection with the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. Queen Elizabeth II, monarch of our ³coalition² partner in the Middle East, also paid a call. Last November, the American voters elected a Democratic majority to Congress to stop the war. Now the new Congress has continued funding, including the largest U.S. embassy in the world which is being built in Baghdad. The U.S. military has built permanent bases in Iraq, where they have said they plan to stay as long as we¹ve been in Korea ‹ i.e., forever. In its funding legislation, Congress also stipulated that to retain our ³assistance,² the Iraqi government must pass a ³hydrocarbon² law. This would provide U.S. and British oil companies with privileged contracts to tap the country¹s gigantic oil reserves. Bush¹s rating in popularity polls now hovers around thirty percent. That of the new Democratic Congress is deservedly lower ‹ twenty-five percent. Three-quarters of our population believe that America is going in the wrong direction. Some of it is the war, but much is economics. Debt among Americans is at an all-time high, and jobs continue to be outsourced to China and other low-wage nations. Middle-class income is in decline. The lack of health insurance is a national scandal. Commentators warn of a possible recession or worse. Also on the Fourth of July, the Washington Post reported that the individual managers of unregulated hedge funds which borrow huge sums from the banks to bet on the rise and fall of the economy are earning $1 billion a year. None of the leading candidates for either party for the 2008 presidential nominations seem to have good answers to any of these issues. But they are accepting huge sums of campaign contributions from the Wall Street high rollers. Mitt Romney must be setting some kind of record with twenty-six fund raisers on his staff. Back in Williamsburg the long hot summer has begun. Tomorrow is another day of tourists, actors on the streets pretending to be eighteenth century personalities, the slow creak of carriages, and the clip-clop of horses¹ hooves. But maybe the spirit and energy of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Washington still hover. Jefferson once said that, ³Every generation needs a new revolution.² Being in Williamsburg against the background of the ominous events elsewhere in the world makes me think that is not a bad idea. President Ronald Reagan had his revolution in the 1980s when he deregulated the financial industry and set forth the Reagan Doctrine of permanent military engagement in third-world countries. Today a new American revolution is overdue ‹ one on behalf of the ordinary people who are fighting and dying for the oil companies in Iraq while so many of their brothers, sisters, and parents are seeing their way of life disintegrate at home. Richard C. Cook is the author of We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, scheduled to appear by September 2007. A retired federal analyst, his career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, and NASA, followed by twenty-one years with the U.S. Treasury Department. He is also author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider¹s Account of How the Reagan AdministrationCaused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age. Read other articles by Richard, or visit Richard's website. This article was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 5:00 am and is filed under General. -- -------------------------------------------------------- Posting archives: http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ Escaping the Matrix website: http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website: http://cyberjournal.org Community Democracy Framework: http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html To subscribe to the newslog list: Send message to: •••@••.••• with Subject: subscribe newslog To subscribe to one of the mirrors of newslog, send a message to either: •••@••.••• •••@••.••• Moderator: •••@••.••• (comments welcome)
