In a posting earlier today, Paul Marks said some nice things about South Dakota. It’s an interesting place — wide open spaces, low taxes and few people. You might wonder why in this place of rugged individualists Democrats consistently win public office. Perhaps the South Dakota website didn’t mention the large number of Indians (Native-Americans as they are now called) who vote a solid bloc for Democrats who continue to keep them in the bondage of federal handouts. This population has opted out of assimilation encouraged by the federal agency whose existence relies on maintaining this population literally ‘on the reservation.’
Driving through these reservations is a mind altering experience. Vast tracts of featureless landscape dotted with tiny habitations looking like a National Geographic documentary on public television depicting the deperate poverty of equatorial Africa. It’s a disgrace and the natural result of what happens when people are encouraged to believe that they are victims and can’t be expected to be responsble for themselves.
Evelyn Palmeri
