It's a tiny town, just a wide place in the road, really, but there are those who love it. And aren't about to let it disappear from the map. There are Huttigs all over rural Arkansas, many them determined to survive. The good news is is that help is on the way--in the personage of Bernadette Devone, organizing director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel (est. 1963). Over the years that outfit has helped different groups in rural South Arkansas help themselves. And coordinated the efforts of scores of others all across the state determined to survive. Its motto: "Putting the public back in public policy since 1963."
To quote Ms. Devone, "You hear all the time about how rural Arkansas is just going down. One reason is because you have ineffective city councils that are not doing what they're supposed to be doing, and it's primarily because most of them don't understand the job that they have." Which is to represent the public, not ignore it. But this lady and her organization are educating them, and most of them are proving fast learners.
Sure, there are troubling cases in which local officials and local folks go after each other--physically. As in Gould, which had been misgoverned for years. But those are the exceptions to a wholesome rule as Concerned Citizens' groups learn patience and local government learns to represent all the people. The two may circle each other warily at first, but soon enough they discover that both have the town's best interests at heart. To quote Huttig's mayor, Tony Cole: "It takes organizations like [Concerned Citizens] to help move towns forward ..." Their efforts should be complementary, like the two arms of a pincers.
What we have here is what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons" of society in wholesome operation: "We begin our public affections in our families ... we pass on to our neighbourhoods ... . . To love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind."
Alexis de Tocqueville, our French visitor with a sharp eye back in the 1830s, observed the habit among Americans to form voluntary associations to get things done, and how those associations grow into institutions that may eventually hold the whole country together. Those little platoons are vital in a society--and need revitalizing from time to time. Like now. As our Huttigs go, so goes America.
It may be no accident that some of our greatest national leaders came out of small towns--the way Harry Truman grew up in Independence, Mo., Dwight Eisenhower in Abilene, Kan., and Adlai Stevenson in Bloomington, Ill. It is not the nation that made those little towns but those little towns that in sum made the nation. They need saving now more than ever.
To quote one enlightened member of Huttig's city council who also belongs to its Concerned Citizens group: "It is my perception, being a part of both groups, that the groups actually enhance one another." And need to keep doing so. Because we're all in this together.
Editorial on 07/08/2016