John Thune and Black Elk: South Dakota rising — new buzzwords

The great anthropologist Joseph Campbell said one of the most significant
moments in the spirit life of America was when the Lakota shaman, Black Elk,
turning and pointing north to northwest, said to the poet Flaming Rainbow,
“There is the center of the world.” Then he said, “But wherever you are is the
center of the world.” He might have been right the first time, because Black
Elk’s Dakotas are awakening. Just as the rest of us up here in the Northeast
seem to be falling into a deep post-industrial slumber.

This current recession in no way resembles the Great Depression, when the
“world economy” basically consisted of England, Germany and the U.S. Germany is
doing well and Brazil is at 7 percent. China and Germany are creditor nations
and, as Jim Rogers says, the U.S. is now the “greatest debtor nation in
history.” But for our purposes here in the Land of the Free, we can see that
the U.S. economy is REGIONALIZING in this recession. The red states are bountiful
with commodities and agricultural products and are generally very healthy. And
there is, says Rogers, “a definite shift from financial centers,” especially
New York and London, “to the producers of real goods.”

Timothy Geithner can lecture the Chinese on currency and the first lady can
lecture India on prostitution. God bless Iron Man and God bless America. But one-size
government is no longer a practical fit globally or nationally in politics and
in economy. In terms of U.S. economics, blue is on the wane and red is on the
rise. Factor in the deep deficits in the post-industrial states and the red-state
farmers are being asked to bail out the blue city folk.

“If you look at current unemployment rates by state, it appears that Nebraska,
South Dakota and North Dakota have the lowest unemployment rates in the
country,” says Laura Ebke, editor of Red State Eclectic. “Those three states,
of course, depend very little on industrial/manufacturing employment, and significantly
on agriculture-related business. Iowa and Kansas also have comparatively low
rates.” While the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that industrial and
post-industrial states — like California, at 12.4, Rhode Island at 11.5 and
Michigan at 13.0 — are among the highest.

And creative business is heading to places like South Dakota, ranked one of the
best pro-business states by Ronald Pollina’s Corporate Top 10, fleeing
California. Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri are also ranked in the
top 10, while California finishes last for the seventh straight year. The
rising states can and should protect and advance their resources. Possibly Sen.
John Thune (R) of South Dakota, who grows more impressive, should take command
as their representative figure. He brings charisma to politics and cachet to
the heartland.

The Hill columnist Dick Morris writes this week, “The Tea Party has made the
Republican Party safe for libertarians.” This will change everything. As Morris
points out, it is no longer about cultural issues, but about economics.

Something else: The pig is dead. For decades now both political parties have
run deficits so deep that when the opposition came to power next, any new spending
would break the bank. The only variation of this was when the most naïve of
presidents, Bill Clinton, inexplicably hired the primo Republican trickster who
advised him to kill the deficit, so the Republicans who followed could spend
again, which they indeed did. Today, neither party can bring home the pork. The
pig is butchered, baked, barbecued and eaten, and there is no pork left.

New buzzwords for a rising era: Regional accountability, states’ rights and
Austrian economics.

Visit Mr. Quigley’s website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.