Compromise, Hell!

Economic WMD's are Being Used Against Our Own People in a Version of
"Freedom" That Makes Greed the Dominant Economic Virtue.
by Wendell Berry

WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY -- I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible
thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we
decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This
destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.

We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else
would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why
else would we all -- by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians -- be
participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow
others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in
our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.

How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the
same thing.

Since the beginning of the conservation effort in our country, conservationists have too often
believed that we could protect the land without protecting the people. This has begun to change,
but for a while yet we will have to reckon with the old assumption that we can preserve the natural
world by protecting wilderness areas while we neglect or destroy the economic landscapes -- the
farms and ranches and working forests -- and the people who use them. That assumption is
understandable in view of the worsening threats to wilderness areas, but it is wrong. If
conservationists hope to save even the wild lands and wild creatures, they are going to have to
address issues of economy, which is to say issues of the health of the landscapes and the towns
and cities where we do our work, and the quality of that work, and the well-being of the people who
do the work.

Governments seem to be making the opposite error, believing that the people can be adequately
protected without protecting the land. And here I am not talking about parties or party doctrines,
but about the dominant political assumption. Sooner or later, governments will have to recognize
that if the land does not prosper, nothing else can prosper for very long. We can have no industry
or trade or wealth or security if we don't uphold the health of the land and the people and the
people's work.

more here


dp

I've always loved Wendell Berry's stuff.

Myself, I think I've been too long away from the wild...