In another life, in another time, in another town — about 30 minutes up the road — I was a history major.
I loved history. In fact, when I left high school, I was convinced I was going to be a history teacher.
I’ve written at length about my college history professors. They were some of the best in the business, and it always amazed me how a small rural college like Delta State had such great historical minds.
One of those professors was particularly tough.
Now, it was easy to fail any of those classes, but there were some that were crushing when you knew you tried, you knew you gave your best effort, and you still got a C.
The professor in question was tied for my favorite, but you had to earn every letter grade in his classes, and almost no one made an A, including myself.
That was until one single question on one single test.
At the end of every test, there were three to four discussion questions. We had the option of picking two to answer.
One of the questions I chose was about Thomas Jefferson (a post-Revolutionary War class by the way).
The question had to do with the reconciliation of Jefferson’s conservatism, mainly rooted in agrarian virtue, and his big government move to purchase the Louisiana territory while president.
My answer was sort of off-the-cuff, as I had not really prepared for the question.
But I had an answer.
To paraphrase, it was something to the effect of Thomas Jefferson was so conservative and was so obsessed with protecting the virtues of agrarianism, that he pulled off the biggest big government policy of the nation’s early history in order to ensure that Americans, for generations, could at least have access to such virtuous lives.
The answer earned me not only a slew of red-ink comments on the test paper, it got me that coveted A on the test. Even better, I think that singular pontification earned me my first and only A from that professor.
As I return to Sunflower County and the Delta, after nine months in a more urban environment, I can’t help but reflect on that test question. And the answer.
Here we are, 245 years after declaring independence from Great Britain, and I have the privilege to live in a rural, agrarian region, often mocked for its flaws, but loved for its virtues.
A century after Jefferson was president, America was thrust into the Industrial Age, which brought massive urbanization. As people flocked to cities, so did wealth and resources.
There have been a number of times since the turn of the 20th century where America has returned to its roots, so to speak, and invested money and resources into rural areas.
At some point in our history, rural hospitals were built to bring quality health care to places like the Mississippi Delta. Roads were paved between cotton fields. Electricity, quality water and phones all became a staple of American life, in the city and in the country.
But here we are in 2023.
Some cities’ water systems are collapsing, both literally and fiscally.
Our towns, Indianola included, are barely lit by public utilities at night.
Our roads are crumbling under our vehicles.
Local schools are closing for lack of students.
And perhaps worst of all, our rural hospitals — none excluded — are in danger of closing in the next decade.
As the Southeast continues to see diminishing power in Washington, many state elected officials tout — all the while enjoying a multi-billion-dollar surplus brought to them by the taxpayers — that investments in crumbling infrastructure, public schools and quality health care is tantamount to socialism.
There was a time when our nation, including leaders of the state of Mississippi, believed in protecting the virtue of rural, agricultural areas, by investing in the construction of county-owned hospitals, quality public schools and paved roads.
I’m here to tell you, I don’t think the expansion of certain health care-related legislation will be the panacea for our woes.
But now, the notion that a hospital, in a county that serves 28,000 people, can simply close, is a very grim possibility. And that possibility is spread throughout the Delta.
Local leaders are faced with trying to keep the doors to those facilities open, while grappling with the loss of customers (population) and resources (customers’ taxes).
State leaders don’t seem to have a state-level answer to the problem. They lament federal intrusion, while shifting the blame for possible hospital closures to diminishing federal reimbursements.
In fact, they seem to be open to larger, urban hospitals gobbling up the small ones as a practical measure.
That doesn’t seem virtuous.
There is something special about living here. Call it the people, the work ethic, or simply the simple life.
Jefferson realized the need to preserve such a life, and he was willing to take drastic measures to do so.
Are any of our leaders in 2023 truly Jeffersonian?
