Friday, October 27, 2006

Bush Is Trashing Our National Parks After promising to save them, Bush has abandoned our most beautiful public spaces. The politicos don't seem to get it that parks are beloved, even by people who don't like much of anything else that government does. In a Harris Poll last December, people ranked the Park Service as the most popular government program of all. With 85% support (including 83% of Republicans!), parks even outpaced such programs as crime fighting, Medicare and Social Security. The Commons Our parks are us. The American ideal -- and the source of our strength as a people, a society, and a nation -- centers on the unifying belief that we truly are "all in this together." This essential democratic notion has taken a severe pounding from the Powers That Be during the past decade or so. For example, on the sharing of America's fabulous economic gains, on the sharing of the horrific price for Bush's war in Iraq, on the sharing of the universal need for good health coverage -- we clearly are no longer in it together. A place to start putting The Commons back together -- both symbolically and tangibly -- could be in our parks. These gems of shared ground link us spiritually and physically with each other, with our past and future, and with our natural world. By letting them be tarnished, our leaders have tarnished America itself. It's up to us, using our grassroots strength, to make these gems gleam again. This article is an insightful and biting critique of the further destruction of what it means to be an American, and all that we hold sacred about living in America. If I wasn't an atheist I'd pray that Teddy Roosevelt (who is surely spinning in his grave) would come back and kick the current occupant of his former house in the ass.  jg 10:02:09 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 John Giacobbe.