Acadia
Shut Down
Today the U.S. Federal Government was
forced to shut down all non-essential services and activities, as
Congress was unable to agree on a continuing funding resolution by
the end of the budget year at midnight last night. Among the many
agencies closing their doors this morning was our own Acadia National
Park.
For anyone who has yet to figure it
out, what we are seeing here is a high-stakes struggle between those
who believe in a small, limited government, and who rely on free
market systems to provide for the basic needs of the people, vs.
those who believe that government has an important role to play in
ensuring that people's basic needs are met, and that inevitable free
market excesses or shortcomings are corrected. The government
program currently being fought over is the Affordable Care Act, also
known as Obama-care; a massive overhaul of our entire health care
system.
To get even more basic – most people
tend to like government services when those services are available to
them. The problem is that they don't want to pay the taxes which are
necessary to fund those services. Hence the unfortunate tendency to
borrow for current services with the expectation that future
generations will pay off the loan.
So far, our democratic system of
government has been unable to handle and resolve these most
fundamental issues, so we lurch from crisis to crisis with no good
end in sight. There are many knowledgeable observers around the world
who are becoming quite concerned that the United States is no longer
able to govern itself, a situation that would have dire economic and
social consequences for us all.
We here at MountDesertIsland.Net,
probably like most Americans, come down somewhere in the middle on
the proper role of government. A welfare state is not an appealing
or effective option in the long run, because it tends to reduce the
personal ambition and responsibility that enable a society to grow
and prosper efficiently. On the other hand, unrestricted and
uncontrolled free markets eventually result in imbalances that can
undermine or even destroy a society. Leaving everyone to their own
devices when resources are not evenly divided can lead to dysfunction
and disaster.
So the loss we feel when our beloved
Acadia National Park closes is symptomatic of a much larger and much
more serious problem. In a properly functioning democracy, the
ultimate solution to this larger and most fundamental problem should
lie with informed, participating voters at the ballot box. But what
happens when nearly half of the potential voters are neither informed
nor participate? What happens when powerful special interest groups
use huge sums of money to influence elections and our elected
representatives for their own private gain? What happens when large
segments of our society struggle to meet the day-to-day requirements
of basic living, while a few others reap all the rewards of a
privileged life?
We have a right to worry and be sad
about the loss of access to our Acadia Park at this beautiful season of the
year. But we have a much more important obligation to find a way to
restore faith in our democratic system of government so our country can function, and so Acadia
doesn't have to close again!