Ken Burns: But building human happiness, you know, that's what governments are supposed to do. And we're now in an argument that governments are essentially bad. There was a time when the government stepped in and made things better in every single way, that we could bring jobs and money and a sense of cohesion. And that's what the parks...they thrived during the Depression, not just because they got the first shovel-ready stimulus dollars of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, but because they brought Americans together. And I think they still can do that, the idea is still durable, it's still flexible, it's still changing and evolving, just like "all men are created equal" meant "all white men are property free of debt". We started off by saving natural scenery and now we save a lot more - Manzanar, Shanksville, all these places that reflect a complicated past, a past that in the screaming that goes on on talk radio we ignore today, but it's in our national parks, they're the repositories of us, not just the grand geological story.
[...]
Rachel Maddow: On the idea of building human happiness, one of things that I think is interesting about the reception of this documentary of yours compared to the other ones is that people are reading an ideological text into this and it's because we've very much romanticized, we've sort of have come up with this great fable that we tell ourselves about how we can pursue human happiness and our government should not restrict us from that. But the other part of the American Dream is that our government believes that policy can advance human happiness while protecting freedom.
Burns: It always has! Exactly. The Homestead Act. The Land Grant College Act. These National Parks. This was an activist government going in and not intruding on individual rights but expanding them. And that's what the parks tell us about. This is a bottom-up story of regular people who fell in love with a place from every conceivable background. It's also the story of the richest of us not hoarding the money in some greedy, selfish way, you know, like Ayn Rand. This is people saying, my god we own beautiful scenery shouldn't everyone have access to it? That's Theodore Roosevelt, that's the naturalist Charles Shelton...these are people who are the elite, the richest people in the nation who sort of counterintuitively say let's share it with everybody.
I mean, this is a great story that's not only bottom up but top down and it meets in the middle in the most spectacular landscapes on earth which we all co-own. But think about what would happen if there were no national parks: the Grand Canyon would be lined with mansions and we'd never see that view; the Everglades would have long since been drained and be filled with tract housing and all sorts of ugly development; Yosemite, one of the most beautiful valleys on earth, would be a gated community; Yellowstone would become 'Geyser World' or something like that. We're talking about the difference between Pottersville and Bedford Falls...but yet so much of the arguments today are, wait a second, that selfishness is very much what America's about. You know what, it's not what we're about, we're about sharing these things in common, it's about "common wealth" which is a wonderful idea and not socialism. Because if it's socialism, then the people you call at 3 am when your house is on fire, that's socialism. And the people who are in Afghanistan risking their lives, that's socialism. And the people picking up your trash, that's socialism too.
Rachel Maddow: And we're so afraid of that word that we can't talk constructively about government without butting up against it at this point. We will get over that, we're just having a national tantrum I believe...
For more on government's greatest achievements - and there are many -
see here and
here. Aside from the national parks,
a short list includes expanding the right to vote, rebuilding Europe after World War II (not to mention
winning World War II!), promoting financial security in retirement, increasing Americans' access to health care, ensuring safe food and water, getting rid of sweatshops and child labor and making workplaces safer, reducing/conquering disease, sending people (and amazing spacecraft, telescopes, etc.) into space, bringing electricity to rural America (e.g., the TVA), on and on and on. Yet the Republicans tell us that government is bad and the "free market" (whatever that is exactly; obviously, all markets operate in a broader context of law, regulation, social stability - or lack thereof - etc.) is bad. Even worse, Republicans set about
proving that government is bad at every turn. Why we ever let them do that is beyond me, but we need to stop letting them (or enabling them by listening to their mindless anti-government rhetoric), at least as long as the formerly "Grand" Old Party remains a party that Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt would be ashamed of if they could see it today.
