I was brought up to believe
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 the people we have elected to represent us — many
of them 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 a destabilized Middle East, the looting of the public
treasury by rampant cronyism, the pillaging of natural resources,
the incompetence that led to the slow drowning of an American city
or the shameless legalization of torture after the fact. These are
symptoms of a larger ill.
The fundamental problem with
those in power is a lack of respect for the public patrimony
created by the work and wealth of generations that came before us.
From the Bush regime’s squandering of our reputation in
the world, to cynical congressional efforts to destroy Social
Security, to the neglect of national, state and local parks and to
the refusal of state governments to adequately finance public
colleges and universities, the governing generation is turning its
back on the work of earlier Americans.
The source of this
lack of respect for the public realm is specific. It is the
narcissism of a selfish philosophy 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. 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 “The Greatest Generation,”
as retired TV anchor Tom Brokaw named them. This was the generation
that lived through the Great Depression or was raised in its
shadow. it created Social Security, the single most successful
program in the history of public government. Members of this
generation 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.
They 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 to assure that this 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 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 has since been
returned to them in the form of higher income taxes I have paid
over the last 40 years.
Today, undergraduate tuition at
the University of Oregon 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 owing between $18,000-$23,000, mired
in debt before they even start their lives. The story is much the
same at other Western state-supported universities.
We
have destroyed the engine that was a major underpinning of the
prosperity the self-styled conservatives enjoyed but are unwilling
to grant to the next generation. It is ingratitude of criminal
proportions.
I spent the last week of September manning a
30-foot trawler in the state of Washington’s magnificent San Juan
Islands. Friends on the boat included a mother and her 8-year-old
son and 10-year-old daughter. As I watched the three of them
napping in the forward berth after a sun-drenched day of
whale-watching and exploring tidepools and the islands, I thought
about the problems we are dumping on these innocents, and the
silent tears just flowed from my eyes. What will they think of us
when they find out what we’ve done?
Kids, this column’s
for you.
Russell Sadler is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). He writes in Eugene,
Oregon.
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