The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror     by David W. Orr     Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 The democratic processes that are supposed to connect the public will to government policy are broken and the reasons are not hard to find. There is, first, a marked decline in public accountability. In the Eisenhower years, for example, the revelation that a presidential advisor had received a Vicuna coat was sufficient to force his resignation. By comparison, George W. Bush asserts, "I'm the commander–see, I don't need to explain–I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." (2) Louis XIV never said it better. Accountability, however, is a two-way street. Those entrusted with public office should intend to be accountable and they should be held accountable by an alert citizenry that demands authenticity, honesty, and transparency in the conduct of the public business. Second, by a well-funded campaign of denigration we've been led to devalue the public and political in favor of free markets, free trade, and a devil-take-the-hindmost kind of individualism. Economics of the worst kind has become a kind of secular religion for many on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. They believe that markets and free trade will fix virtually all of our public and political problems–if only we get government off our backs. Markets certainly can do some things, but if they do anything for children, grandchildren, communities, democracy, parks, environmental quality, climate stability, biological diversity, public health, literacy, fairness, justice, peace, democracy or the long-term, it is purely accidental. Without regulation and direction they will sell assault rifles or Bibles, poisons or vitamins, Humvees or hybrids, pornography or art–whatever the highest bidders want. And without a sense of irony, those much devoted to unfettered markets conveniently overlook the fact that billions are spent for advertising and billions more to lobby for tax breaks and subsidies. The free market, much admired in theory, is not and never has been entirely free. At its extreme, the idea is a fraud. Markets, as Adam Smith knew, have always and everywhere required the restraints imposed by stable communities, rules, regulations, laws, and decent law-abiding people who honor contracts. The mania for free markets will someday be seen for what it is: a curious intellectual aberration but with destructive consequences for real people and real places. Government, on the other hand, was created to advance larger aims and protect those things that should not be sold in any market, ever. If some things should not be sold, it follows that government, the guardian of those things, should not be up for sale either. But it is. Extremists, now in control of the White House, Congress, the Courts, and much of the media, want to go further to repeal the hard-won social, environmental, and economic gains of the twentieth century and abort the idea that we, as citizens working through representative institutions, might do many things better in the twenty-first century. Those in control intend to turn the clock back to a more brutal time and run government as if it were a business, exactly which business they do not say. Is it Enron? Or Worldcom? Or Global Crossings? Or Arthur Andersen? Or maybe it's Halliburton, experts in extracting lucrative military contracts and avoiding scrutiny. Market fundamentalism and the denigration of the political, however, would not have been possible without a great deal of confusion about the meanings of words we use to describe our political life and public choices. George Orwell once warned that the subversion of society begins with the corruption of its language. Words such as "conservative," "liberal," "patriotism," "taxation," "public," "government," and even "Christianity" have been twisted and distorted by those who stand to gain much from public perplexity. The angry fulminations and garish nonsense of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Grover Norquist serve as a smokescreen for a new generation of robber barons and the grand larceny now under way. Their carefully crafted veneer of angry populism is sheer demagoguery aimed to exploit fears endemic to a rapidly changing society. Intending to distract us, they are pillaging our children's future. American politics has seldom been nastier or nuttier, and talk-show thuggery is assumed to be the only way to conduct public dialogue. There are nonetheless deeper and more positive currents in American life. Opportunity, capability, ingenuity, idealism, innovation, and good-heartedness are still evident across the nation. Creativity is flourishing at the grassroots of American society. And we can do things no other generation could do. But looking to the horizon, the political, social, and economic topography grows steeper and more treacherous. We will soon see the mounting consequences of climate change, the loss of biological diversity, toxic pollution, the breakdown of entire ecosystems, rising population, growing poverty, terrorism, ecological refugees, political instability, and new diseases for which we have no good remedies. Rather than deal with these issues in a timely and systematic way as common sense would suggest, we've done a quarter-century equivalent of an Australian "walk about," in which delay, denial, and dereliction became the norm in our national politics. We now have to move quickly from fossil fuels to renewable energy and must establish sustainable practices in agriculture and forestry, rebuild entire habitable cities, construct an ecologically viable transportation system, protect biological diversity, create sustainable communities, safeguard air and water quality, eliminate toxics, and not least, distribute wealth fairly within and between generations. These, however, are not separate or separable things, but are rather part of a larger pattern. They require us to understand the connections between how we provision ourselves with energy, food, and shelter and issues of economic prosperity, fairness, security, and democracy. Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 2. Quoted in Bob Woodward, Bush at War, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002, p. 145-146.