If a person had to locate a stronghold for right wing ideology, that stronghold would be Mississippi. If there has ever been a time when right wing ideology has not dominated Mississippi’s government, it certainly doesn’t come leaping to mind. Democrats and Republicans alike in Mississippi are beholden to right wing interest groups, ideologically and economically.
If the right wing agenda for society were at all productive, in comparison with the progressive agenda that Mississippi so strongly rejects, Mississippi would be prospering. However, the statistics show with as much clarity as anybody could ask for that prosperity is the last thing that Mississippi can claim as a product of its political system.
The overall poverty rate in Mississippi is 21.3 percent, and the child poverty rate in Mississippi is even greater, at 30.9 percent. Both are more than half again as large as the national average.
Mississippi is not just failing to prosper. It is drowning in poverty, thanks to its history of right wing politics. America as a nation must not continue to follow the example of Mississippi in national politics. In 2008, it’s time to return to a brighter, progressive vision that will provide a better life for all Americans, and help those states, like Mississippi, that are failing to live up to America’s standard of a decent way of life.
