Full story on the TN house fire - video
Jerry Sturdivant
Conservatism's Trial By Fire
Last week, an accident inside Gene Cranick's Obion, TN home started a fire.
As the fire quickly spread throughout the house, the Cranicks escaped from
their home and called their fire department. Yet the local firefighters,
operating under the auspices of the South Fulton Fire Department (SFFD), refused
to respond to the call, noting that their service was available to the rural
residents of Obion County only by subscription, and the Cranicks had not paid
the annual $75 fee. When the fire spread to the surrounding properties, the
neighbors -- who had paid the fee -- called the firefighters. And so, the
firefighters arrived on the scene, but they stood
by and watched as the Cranick
residence burned to the ground, refusing to assist the pleading family -- which
offered to pay them anything on the spot to help. Even though most of the
country was outraged by the case of the Cranicks, leading conservatives in the
media immediately jumped
at the chance to defend the
actions of the SFFD and condemn the family in question. The story of Gene
Cranick's home illustrates the ascendancy of a compassion-less conservative
philosophy that believes in the on-your-own society and has virtually
abandoned the common-good creed that we are our brothers keepers. Only by
rededicating ourselves to rebuilding an American Dream that works for all
Americans can progressives repudiate this merciless philosophy.
A MORALLY DEPRAVED
POLICY: As firefighters stood by idly watching, the fire that consumed the
Cranick's family home also took the lives of their
four pets. The Obion County policy of using subscription-only firefighting
originated in 1990, but it has a
parallel to the 19th century, when it was common for Americans to have to
purchase private firefighter insurance or risk their homes being burned down
without any hope of preventing it. In 2008, the county's fire department along
with the conservativecounty commission reviewed the policy and determined that
it would continue to offer fire services to rural parts of the county via
subscription to the SFFD, rejecting a paltry 0.13 percent increase in
property taxes on households to fund a proper fire service that would respond to
all calls. When a local news station asked Mayor David Crocker how he could
justify the firefighters' refusal to help the Cranicks, he told them that the
policy was just like buying auto insurance from a private insurance company, and
that they wouldn't "expect an insurance company to pay for an unprotected
vehicle after
it wrecked." Despite widespread outrage over the event, the county
commission's budget committee met Monday night and decided to expand the subscription-only fire service to
even more towns. Union City Fire Department Chief Kelly Edmison objected to the
new expansion, saying that "the best option is a true fire tax. It eliminates
this having 911 or whatever check to say, 'Are they covered or not covered?' The
last thing a firefighter wants to do is to not be able to help
when they'd like to."
DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE: It didn't take long for leading
conservatives to leap to the defense of Obion County and the SFFD. After the
National Review's Daniel Foster wrote that he saw "no
moral theory" that would justify the actions of the firefighters, his fellow
writers immediately attacked him. "Dan, you are 100 percent wrong," wrote Kevin
Williamson. "The world is full
of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates -- and the problems they create for
themselves are their own. These free-riders [referring to the Cranicks] have no
more right to South Fulton's firefighting services than people in Muleshoe,
Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives." Next, Jonah Goldberg, while admitting
that the story is "sad," said it would probably "save
more houses over the long haul" because it would incentivize homeowners to
subscribe to the fire service in the future. Conservative writer John Derbyshire
joined in by saying he was "entirely
with the South Fulton fire department," explaining that the policy was
fostering personal responsibility. One of the country's most famous
right-wingers, Glenn Beck, along with his producer Pat Gray, mocked and
condemned the Cranick family on his radio show. Gray adopted a thick
southern drawl to mock Gene Cranick's accent, while Beck explained that people
who look at things "just on raw feeling are not going to understand" that the
SFFD was justified in not helping the family. He then went on to say that if the
fire department had helped, they'd just be allowing the Cranicks to sponge "off
[their] neighbor's resources." He concluded, "this is the kind of stuff that's
going to have to happen, we are going to have
to have these kinds of things." The American Family Association's Brian
Fischer even went as far as to say that the "fire department did the right and
Christian thing. ... Critics of the fire department are confused both about
right and wrong and about Christianity. And it is because they have fallen prey
to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only
about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular
Christian values of individual responsibility and accountability." Leading
conservative blog Hot Air, one of the few conservative voices to condemn the
actions of the SFFD firefighters, wrote that "95 percent" of the commenters on
their blog will likely respond to the story by saying, "Right
on, let it burn. A contract's a contract!" MSNBC host Keith Olbermann asked
Gene Cranick to respond to conservatives attacking his family and siding with
Obion County. Cranick answered, "I respond to those people like this: wait
until the shoe is on the other foot."
NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT: Unfortunately, the responses by
these leading conservatives are far from an aberration. Rather, they are
emblematic of a conservative movement that believes in the on-your-own society
and has declared war on empathy. During the debate over the confirmation of
Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, numerous conservatives attacked Sotomayor and progressives who backed
her for their belief that a justice should possess empathy. A poll released that
summer showed that 56
percent of self-identified
Republicans believe that empathy was not an "important characteristic" for a
Supreme Court Justice to possess, while 73 percent of self-identified
Democrats did. Indeed, conservatives have taken to attacking people who are
down on their luck, rather than giving them a hand up. Two days ago,
FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey advocated for completely
eliminating federal funding
for higher education, which would deprive 19
million Americans who applied
for college assistance this year of the ability to get federally subsidized
loans and grants. Senate conservatives have repeatedly come together
to filibuster the extension of unemployment benefits for jobless Americans who
can't find work in the poor economy. Leading conservative and former Nixon
speechwriter Ben Stein wrote at the right-wing American Spectator that Americans
"who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor
work habits and poor personalities....who do not know how to do a day's
work." Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) warned that extending unemployment insurance was
"creating
hobos." The Associated Press discovered last month that Sen. Tom Coburn
(R-OK) is holding up hundreds
of millions of dollars in reconstruction aid for Haiti earthquake survivors
over an obscure objection about bureaucratic redundancy. Yet it isn't
enough for progressives to simply rebuke conservatives for their lack of
empathy. They must proudly embrace an alternative vision: one of an America that
is just and fair in its actions at home and abroad, in the renewed spirit of the
American Dream.
--
Think Progerss
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