Most merciful God.
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and what we have left undone.
-The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church
October 11, 2009, the day President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first family attended services at St. Joseph’s Episcopal for the fourth time since his inauguration, reciting again the prayer above, a prayer that echoes the challenge of his award and reminds the pious that claiming faith includes a promise to act.
Four days later, the President visited New Orleans, his first excursion to the area devastated 4 years ago by Hurricane Katrina, both fulfilling a campaign promise and acknowledging promises forgotten.
Southerners are used to forgotten promises. Take Mississippi, for example. Government programs liberals cite as the backbone of a progressive agenda - public education and social security - have neither saved Mississippi's children from the nation's worst school system nor kept its seniors (more than 1 in 6, highest in all 50 states) from living in abject poverty.
Adjacent to Mississippi is my beloved Tennessee, and another memorial to failed government promises. One year after deferred maintenance led to a TVA plant spilling coal waste across acres of countryside, cleanup consists of possibly covering the mess with a golf course and hauling 3 million tons of the toxic sludge to a privately owned facility in Perry County, Alabama, despite the protests of Perry’s residents.
Why should the people of Perry believe in government as a force for good when tax dollars are used to pay businesses to cart poison into their community? Why should people who drive by acres of ash sludge in Tennessee believe in government efficiency? Why should Mississippians believe that, say, government run health care will improve their lot any more than public education and social security increased opportunity or prevented their elderly from living in squalor?
As if they are not to believe their own lying eyes, southerners are portrayed by sanctimonious liberal elites as ignorant racists voting against their own best interest for electing legions of republicans who acknowledge their experiences - that government has been inefficient, incompetent and uncaring.
Go south again, Mr. President. See the election for what it was - not just a mandate for change from believers, but also a statement of protest from red-staters who daily witness what government has left undone.
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