|
Last Updated:
Oct 30th, 2006 - 13:52:02
Affiliates
Powells.com
Favorite Links
American Friends Service Committee
Friends Committee on National Legislation
National Catholic Reporter
British Broadcasting Company
The Guardian
Christian Science Monitor
LA Times
SF Gate
Oregonian
The Register Guard
Environmental News Network
Sojourners
Orion
Swans Commentary
Federation of American Scientists
Car Free Times
Indy Media
AlterNet.org
Common Dreams
The Nation
Utne Reader
Eugene Weekly
Willamette Week
Portland Tribune
Bitter Lemons.org
The Travels of our First Webmaster
|
|
|
Voices of the Northwest
I was brought up to believe, like many of you readers, that we had a moral obligation to leave our corner of the world better off than we found it. In recent years, I am haunted by the notion that our present governing generation -- a majority of self-styled “conservatives” -- may be the first in modern American history to fail to meet this obligation.
There are many signs that the legacy of the governing generation will be a world worse off. It is not limited to the bungled Iraq War and the consequences of a destabilized Middle East, the corrupt looting of the public treasury by rampant cronyism, the incompetence that led to the slow drowning of a great American city, live on on CNN, or the shameless promotion of legislation legalizing torture after the fact. These are symptoms of a larger ill.
The fundamental problem with the governing generation that dominates the Republican Party is a lack of respect for the public patrimony created by the work and wealth of the generations that came before us. This lack of respect is displayed at every level of government.
From the Bush regime’s squandering of our reputation in the world....to cynical congressional efforts to destroy Social Security....to the public’s unwillingness to pay to maintain public infrastructure like streets, roads, highways and sewers....to the neglect of national, state and local parks....to the refusal of state governments to adequately finance public colleges and universities, the governing generation is ungratefully turning its back on the legacy built by previous generations.
This is not one of those gratuitous criticisms of the “Baby Boomer Generation” so much in fashion these days. Many boomers are as astonished and angry at the lack of respect for the public patrimony as anyone else. The source of this lack of respect for the public realm is very specific. It is the self-absorbed narcissism of the “selfish is good” philosophy of Ayn Rand and her ideological acolytes combined with the Libertarian libel that there is no such thing as the “common good.” The only legitimate interest is self-interest, and taxation to support the “common good” is theft. It is the guiding philosophy of the self-styled conservatives that dominate the governing generation.
This ideology denies the fundamental reason that societies organize communities in the first place -- to respond to needs people cannot meet individually.
Our present patrimony was created largely by those retired NBC anchor Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation.” This was the generation that lived through the Great Depression or was raised in its shadow. They created Social Security, the single most successful program in the history of public government. They fought and won World War II. They generously rebuilt Europe and Japan. They passed the GI Bill offering a college education to those who interrupted their lives to serve their country.
This generation understood the “common good” because they had been deprived of it for nearly two decades. From 1927, when American agriculture went into depression, until 1946 when the war ended, this generation endured the privation of the Depression and the rationing and wage and price controls of the war. They passed legislation intended to assure that would not happen to any future generation.
In the name of “conservative reform” most of those safeguards have been repealed or dismantled. They no longer exist.
Nowhere is this destruction of the public patrimony more flagrant than in the systematic, deliberate destruction of public higher education. When I attended the University of Oregon in the mid-1960s, my undergraduate tuition of about $1,000 for the school year reflected 25 percent of the per-student operating cost. Taxpayers paid the remaining 75 percent which they have seen returned in the form of higher income taxes I have paid over the last 40 years.
Today, undergraduate tuition starts around $5,800 and reflects 75 percent of the per-student operating cost. Taxpayers are putting up only about 25 percent. And students are being encouraged to borrow the money to pay their bills. Students are graduating with an average debt between $18, 000 - $23,000, mired in debt before they even start their lives.
We have destroyed the engine that was a major underpinning of the prosperity the self-styled conservatives enjoyed but will not grant to the next generation.
It is ingratitude of criminal proportions.
I spent the last week aboard a 30 foot trawler in the State of Washington’s magnificent San Juan Islands. The friends included a single mother and her 8-year-old boy and 10-year-old daughter.
As I watched the three of them quietly sleeping in the forward berth after warm, sun-drenched days of whale watching and exploring in the islands, I thought about the intractable problems we are dumping on these innocents and the silent tears just flowed from my eyes.
Dear God, what will they think of us when they find out what we’ve done?
Kids, this column’s for you..
Copyright ©2006 by Russell Sadler
Russell Sadler is a journalist and a lecturer at Southern Oregon University. You may write him c/o publisher at westbynorthwest.org. Visit Sadler's Sense columns at West By Northwest.org:
Sadler's Sense: A Snapshot of Electorial Politics and Power in Oregon
Sadler's Sense: Sea Change
Sadler's Sense: Ben Westlund's Bid for Governor and Why He Makes Sense
Sadler's Sense: Croesus and Responsibility
Sadler's Sense: Can We Kick the "Kicker" Habit? Or... the Big Lie
Sadler's Sense: Enter Starret Stage Right -- Now a Four Way Race for Governor and Freeway Nation or Free Nation?
Sadler's Sense: How Portland Lost a University for 100 Years
Sadler's Sense: Beyond Industrial Forestry
Sadler's Sense: Who Can Bridge the Great Divide?
Sadler's Sense: Peer Review and Politics
Sadler's Sense: Of Forests and The River
Sadler's Sense: Development and Belief --Who Pays?
Sadler's Sense: Time Out of Mind
Sadler's Sense: Draining America First Oil Policy Inadequate to the Energy Challenge
Sadler's Sense: Holly, Folly and Why Its Ok to Cut Christmas Trees
Sadler's Sense: We Need the Constitutional Limits of the Initiative Process
Sadler's Sense: Learning from the Katrina Moment
Sadler's Sense: A Right to Die?
Sadler's Sense: Who Are These Candidates Representing?
Sadler's Sense: The Birth Tax
Sadler's Sense: The Thin Veneer
Sadler's Sense: Gas Policy After Katrina-- Oregon Can Lead the Way Again
Sadler's Sense: Oregon's Supreme Court Take on "Takings" Flies on Eagle Wings
Sadler's Sense: Legislature's Sandbox Politics Irresponsible
Sadler's Sense: Beyond Dorchester - Can Our Traditional Parties Stand for Anything Substantive?
Sadler's Sense: The Oregon Gasoline Tax, Pork Barrel Projects and Big Brother
Sadler's Sense: A Classic Conservative Judge Who Conserves the Law
Sadler's Sense: On the Economic Ramparts--The Northwest, Defazio and CAFTA
Sadler's Sense: Can Dissatisfaction Become a Wave for Political Sanity?
Sadler's Sense: Oregon's Public Lands Patrimony in Danger Once Again
Sadler's Sense: Driving a Road to State Religion?
Sadler's Sense: Remembering Roy Lieuallen and his Legacy
Sadler's Sense: The Big Sky Game: Manufacturers, Airlines and Competing Visions
Sadler's Sense: On Death: Our Challenged Autonomy
Sadler's Sense: Who Is in Charge of the State's Purse?
Sadler's Sense: The Risks of Shifting Higher Ed.'s Costs and Who Pays
Sadler's Sense: The Good Ship School Finance Is Sinking
Sadler's Sense: Infrastructure Renewal Needed
Sadler's Sense: The Unlikely Poster Child for Measure 37
Sadler's Sense: Of Myths, Money and Machines, Why We Blame the Owl
Sadler's Sense: Not Window Dressing
Sadler's Sense: From Constantine to George, God's Will and Secular Power
Sadler's Sense: Credibility or State of Our State
Sadler's Sense: Look in the Mirror, Oregon
Sadler's Sense: Why We Must Pay the Piper Now
Sadler's Sense: A Short History of Measure 30
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
Top of Page
untitled
|
|
|
