Bad Water and Good Government

Last week, the water supply in South County had a bad taste to it. Aside from heavy rain, it was in part due to the chorine added to the water. Chlorine is added to prevent diseases like cholera that killed many people in St. Louis in the nineteenth century until a groundbreaking study in London discovered the connection between a tainted water supply and the often fatal disease. 

As you read this, people in earthquake-ravaged Haiti have died and will probably continue to die from cholera.  But in this area, public health officials are continuously monitoring the water supply, testing it according to state and federal standards. 

But consider what would happen here if advocates celebrating another polluted body of water, the people of the Tea Party, had their way. Tea Party members hate government on principle and consider any government regulation suspect at best or more likely, the sinister ploy of an alien culture infecting America. They show up at public forums, carrying signs like ''Keep the government out of my Medicare'' or portray Obama as Hitler. They disrupt and shout down anyone who dares to disagree with them. 

What they lack in intelligence, knowledge and civility they more than compensate with ignorance, bigotry and the kind of hostility that only the glassed-eyed, mouth-breathing mob can know. But give them credit: they are the new face of the Republican party. In race after race across the county in the recent political election, the Tea Party pushed out mainstream Republicans and helped them to defeat enough Democrats to take control of the House of Representatives. 

True, they lost some key races. Apparently witchcraft was not powerful enough to deceive the voters in Delaware and they failed in other races, but they are the new power in the land ready to go on a 'search and destroy' mission in Washington when the new congress convenes in January. 

What would Tea Party members have done when the water went bad? Nothing. They don't believe in government interference. Let the private sector regulate itself. And government water monitoring? State and federal water standards? That's Communist talk.

It is so much easier for them to have pure ideology than for the rest of us to have pure water. 

Government is a human activity and is therefore flawed.  Even at its best, government is often petty, arbitrary, bureaucratic and unjust.  But the childlike tantrums of the Tea Party aside, government has an important and necessary role to play in our lives,  regulating some things and staying out of other things.

The wisdom to know the difference is something the Tea Party will never grasp.  It is left for the rest of us to learn as best we can. Perfect government is impossible. Better government is possible if we work at it.