Prune the tree, don't cut it down

Frontiersman editorial board

There is a sense that if you want to be elected in the Mat-Su Valley, you'd better call yourself a conservative -- at least a fiscal conservative. Some even believe that candidates would rather run as independents than as Democrats to avoid even the faintest notion that they might be … gasp … liberal. But what does it mean to be fiscally conservative? Here it seems to mean standing in opposition to any increase in government spending with the possible exception of infrastructure spending that results in some vague notion of economic growth.

In other words, big government is bad government, and anything that threatens to grow rather than shrink the government is a threat to our personal freedom and our rugged individualism. The thing about rugged individuals, though, is that they also like to have roads to drive on -- and well-maintained roads at that. They like their rugged individual children to go to good schools where the teachers are qualified and the heat works in winter. They like to know that if their rugged individual home should burst into flames or be invaded by scofflaws, fire protection or police will respond and protect their property.

The trait that makes us American perhaps more than any other is our natural distrust of government. Ironically, we receive more from our government, in terms of infrastructure and safety nets, than do the citizens of most other countries. It is right to demand that government run as efficiently, and as lean, as possible. It is also imperative to maintain a sense of reality about the purpose of government. We are not rugged individuals, only. We are also a society, a community that thrives more because of the things we do together than the things we do apart. Our pooled resources are the ones that keep us most safe and that afford us our greatest freedoms. It is a paradox that can be taken for granted, but only to a point.

When the candidates argue over who is more fiscally conservative, consider how far you are willing to sacrifice. Parks in the Valley were not funded this year. Would we have screamed so loudly had the closed parks been in somebody else's back yard? Are the people in Anchorage concerned about winter road maintenance in the Valley? They are certainly not as concerned as the people in Willow.

Perhaps we should demand that our representatives be fiscally responsible and fiscally realistic rather than just fiscally conservative. Are they only pruning the tree so it will produce more in the future, or are they cutting the tree down for firewood? You can only burn it once, but if you're wise, you can harvest the fruit for many seasons.