Today America faces a daunting task: finding a way to reduce deficits and debt while not crashing the economy and still maintaining the critical services that are only, or best, provided by the public sector.
At the Iowa Policy Project, we have the opportunity to work with many similar state and national organizations — nonpartisan, nonprofit, issue-focused and fact-based analysis at the heart of their missions and their work. One of these colleagues, Michael Lipsky, distinguished senior fellow at Demos, recently wrote a column in The New York Times about a hiking trip in the Pasayten Wilderness in Washington state, near the Canadian border.
In his excellent piece, “A Well-Regulated Wilderness,” Lipsky wrote that, even there, he found himself thinking about government. “Not that there was much of it in sight,” he remarked. He continued:
There were no rangers to check our reservations, no posted rules telling us where and how to set up camp.
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Michael Lipsky, Demos
If anything, the Pasayten seemed to prove that we don’t need government, that humans can be self-regulating: per the unofficial rules of backpacking, most of our campsites had been reused repeatedly, to minimize damage to the environment, and litter was rare.
On reflection, however, this nursery of freedom spoke directly to the role of government in shaping our world. It was thanks to decades of effective lawmaking that we could enjoy four days in the open country, fixing meals, hiking and spending family time together. … Americans once feared the wilderness and sought to tame it. Now we seek it out as redemptive. …
In 1964 Congress passed the Wilderness Act, which set aside 9.1 million acres of public land as places where people would be visitors but not leave any marks; today some 108 million acres are protected under the act.
Michael Lipsky’s perspective is spot-on. Let’s look at it another way: Would Exxon have done this? Or Microsoft? Or Wal-mart? Would it even make sense for them, or their stockholders, to do so? To whose mission, then, do such responsibilities fall? Does it not make sense that this would fall to the federal government? Would you not say the same about basic economic safety-net programs? Infrastructure such as roads and bridges? Workplace safety? Clean water and clean air protection? Civil rights and education? National security?
The assault on our public structures by convenient, slick, political messages of the day not only disregards, but defies, what in our hearts and minds we know are the American values of stewardship and community that are the thrust of what government does.
We’re all concerned about deficits and debt and the impact on our children and grandchildren, but we also must be challenged to address the impact on those future generations of a failure to accept the mantle of responsibility of maintaining and nurturing the structures that have sustained us, when “self-regulation” is not enough. For if we do fail on that score, it will be every bit as much a debt as one of dollars.
Posted by Mike Owen, Assistant Director
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
