Toward Freedom

The empire ends with a pull out. Not, as many supposed a few years ago, from Iraq. There, as well as in Afghanistan, we are mulishly staying the course, come what may, trapped in the biggest of all the "too-big-to-fail" boondoggles. But from Detroit. Of course, the real evacuation of the Motor City began decades ago, when Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler started to move more and more of their operations out of the downtown area to harder to unionize rural areas and suburbs, and, finally, overseas.

It was a Third World scene with an American setting. Hundreds of tired and desperate people crowded around an aid worker with a bullhorn, straining to hear the instructions and worried they might be left out. Some had arrived at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Wise, Virginia, two days before. They drove in from 16 states, anxious to relieve pain, diagnose aches and see and hear better.