By Kevin D. Williamson
Friday, February 19, 2021
Ted Cruz wasn’t going to shovel your driveway.
Senator Cruz (R., Texas) is the subject of this week’s
ritual denunciation for the grievous sin of taking his daughters to Cancun,
rather than stay in Texas and endure the snow and blackouts with the shivering
little people.
Cruz’s stock is not trading at an all-time high on my
personal exchange these days, but the senator’s critics are, in this case,
off-base. People who can take care of
themselves and their families in an emergency should take care of themselves and their families in an emergency,
if only to remove the possibility of their having to be taken care of by the
public. Of course, Senator Cruz probably will be more comfortable in Cancun
than he would be in River Oaks, but it is no less the case that by absenting
himself from the scene, he has given Houston — including its utility providers
and its emergency services — one fewer person to worry about. From that point
of view, Senator Cruz has a positive moral obligation to be in Cancun.
It was his unnecessary return (in the face of shrill
criticism) that was a poor decision.
I sympathize. When Hurricane Sandy flooded Manhattan in
2012, I was living in a very tall building downtown, near the waterfront. The
floodwater wasn’t going to rise as high as my windows, but it was certain that
the electricity, water, and elevators would be out of commission, and it was
likely that the ground-level entrance and exit to the building would be
practically impassable. Sushi deliveries were out of the question. I could have
holed up in my apartment — but, why? I rode out the flood at an inexpensive
hotel in Palm Springs, where the wifi was working and so was I. Nobody had to
worry about me. If it weren’t for the travel complications caused by the
epidemic, I wouldn’t have been in Texas for this wintry goat rodeo, either.
If the world is mad at Senator Cruz, it is not because he
has done anything that hurt anybody. What he has done is judged to be something
else: unseemly. The democratic
religion in the United States holds, for reasons of pure superstition, that
there must be a radical identification between political leaders and the people
they represent, which is why Senator Cruz of Princeton and Harvard Law
sometimes does that ridiculous good-ol’-boy shtick of his. If the people of
Houston are going to suffer — and they are suffering — then Senator Cruz is
expected to stay and suffer alongside them, even if he need not do so, and even
if prudence would recommend his not doing so.
Would his staying make anybody in Texas better off? No.
If anything, it might make them worse off: Suppose Senator Cruz and a neighbor
three houses down both have an emergency and dial 911 at the same moment — does
anybody think that a senator is going
to the end of the line, even if he doesn’t ask for or desire special treatment?
If it were necessary to evacuate people, does anybody think that a senator
would not have a seat on the bus,
even if that meant someone else losing one?
As Senator Cruz is subjected to two minutes’ hate for his
democratic unseemliness, the great American musical genius Dolly Parton is
being praised for her republican seemliness. Her home state of Tennessee is
thickly planted with statues of Confederate figures and recently has become
embarrassed by that. And so its political leaders are engaged in the
all-important project of replacing old statues of embarrassing Tennesseans with
new statues of pride-inspiring ones, with the songstress of Sevierville
naturally high on the list. Parton has very wisely demurred, asking the
legislature to table any such action for now, perhaps until after her death, at
which point they might reconsider.
“Somewhere down the road several years from now or
perhaps after I’m gone, if you still feel I deserve it, then I’m certain I will
stand proud in our great state capitol as a grateful Tennessean,” she said.
That it is unseemly in a republic to erect statues or
other monuments to living people, or to memorialize them in the names of public
buildings and the like, was, until very recently, a point of general consensus.
Many agencies and institutions forbid it, with good reason.
When Julius Caesar received divine honors during his
living years, it was a bad sign for the Roman republic, and the statue that was
later erected in his honor was an item of religious devotion rather than a mere
work of public art. Cicero denounced the proposal to conduct a ceremony of
divine thanksgiving to Caesar as a “sacrilege beyond expiation.” We Americans
build temples to our Caesars, too, notably the presidential libraries that
began with the one dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt, whose devotees maintain an
active political cult to this day.
Dolly Parton is no Julius Caesar. (Thank goodness — I am
in the camp of Brutus.) But the principle behind her objection rests on the
same foundation as the bias against memorializing living politicians. Though
she is a national treasure and no doubt will be remembered as one, she also is
an ordinary, fallen human being who ought to be treated as such in life. The
strictures of democratic equality may be loosened a bit in death.
We fail to defend that principle all too often. Houston’s
George Bush International Airport was so named in 1997, not long after the man
left office and 20 years before he died. Down the road, the ghost of Governor
William P. Hobby is probably safe from having his airport renamed for Senator
Cruz, who would be much better memorialized at a seaport, if ever it comes to
that.
A cruise to Cancun? There is precedent.
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