Obama's 'New Deal' and a Texas hick town

By David Paulin

The era of New Deal-style big government may have arrived with the Obama administration. However, you'd never know it by the way folks in Bastrop, Tex., are reacting to a local tragedy – a devastating wildfire that destroyed scores of businesses and homes.

What can the government do for them?

It's not a question anybody seems to be asking in the town of 7,200 in central Texas.

Instead, residents are counting their blessings, displaying remarkable resilience – and pitching in to help out one another after one of the worst wild fires in Bastrop's history.

"It's up to the community to take care of one another," resident David Marsh told a local television station, News 8 in nearby Austin, the capital. "Because we're a small town we will get through it," added volunteer firefighter John Ertz.

Liberal elites – and the president himself – deride such small-town folks in the nation's Red states as gun-toting and Bible-thumping jerks. But in his seminal work “Democracy in America” published in 1835, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville saw these folks as forming the backbone of America's grand experiment in democracy thanks to their civil engagement values, individualism, and can-do spirit.

Indeed, nobody interviewed by News 8 was asking what the state or Federal government could do for them. Instead, they were asking what they must do for themselves. All of which underscores that many Americans are not on the same page with the big government and big-spending liberals now endeavoring to remake America's cultural and political landscape.

Take a look at this story and video clip on the aftermath of the Bastrop wildfire -- and judge for yourself.