Joe Conason: What The Ebola Virus Is Trying To Teach Us

[babylonsister]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/ebola-virus-trying-teach-us/

What The Ebola Virus Is Trying To Teach Us
October 8, 2014 6:00 am


Even if Africa’s Ebola emergency never mutates into a global catastrophe, those of us who live in the world’s most fortunate country ought to consider what this fearsome virus can teach us. The lessons are quite obvious at this point – and contain implications that are political in the most urgent sense.

The Tea Party mania for shrinking federal budgets and rejecting international organizations — both of which are bedrock policy among the current Republican leadership – is not only bad for our national prestige but exceptionally dangerous to our health. At the insistence of House leaders whose answer to every problem has been cutting government and reducing taxes, the United States has steadily starved the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.

The disturbing consequence is that in both this country and the world, humanity lacks the full arsenal of weapons needed to combat Ebola and other potentially devastating outbreaks of tropical disease.

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Cutting funds to the WHO surely thrilled congressional Republicans, Tea Party leaders, and everyone else in this country who expresses irrational hostility toward the UN. But that was a very perilous way to gratify our country’s isolationist faction, which evidently cannot understand that this is one planet – and that the fates of its peoples are inseparably joined.

If we want to improve our security, if we want our children to live in safety, it is long past time to rid Washington of the partisan enemies of strong, competent government and international cooperation. We don’t yet know the full cost of their mindless actions, but if we are unlucky, it could be incalculable.