Selfish conservatism hasn't served Wyoming

“Our budget crisis would be much worse had we not expanded Medicaid.” Those were the words of a Montana health official, spoken about what saved them from the deep budget cuts Wyoming experienced.

Unlike Montanans, Wyoming’s legislators insisted on a spiteful anti-Obama stand rather than doing that which could have saved the state millions of dollars while providing healthcare to thousands.

It was ideologically selfish as conservatism often is. What John Kenneth Galbraith said decades ago is true yet today. “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for moral justification for selfishness.”

Left to conservatives, we would neither have social security, Medicare, Medicaid, nor the Civil Rights Act, not even Grand Teton National Park.

Most Wyomingites agree setting aside some of the most beautiful land in the country proved the right thing to do. It has been, as Wallace Stegner observed, a sanctuary for bears and moose and countless animal, bird, fish, and plant species. Stegner thought, Grand Teton and other national parks provided a sanctuary for our species as well.

In her book, “The Hour of Land,” Terry Tempest Williams describes this sacred place. “Wolves howl in the bright light of the moon. Bison remain wild, not tamed. And on dark days, when everywhere we turn war is waging and violence around the world seems to be rising, a dozen trumpeter swans fly in formation over snow-covered peaks.”

The jewel of northwest Wyoming would never have existed if Wyoming’s conservatives had had their way.

Williams recounts this history. When Grand Teton National Park was created in 1929, it included a small portion of today’s park. Much of the Snake River valley remained open to development. John D. Rockefeller, according to Horace Albright, wanted to save Americans “from the onslaught of an industrial society.” Albright was the Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. Rockefeller was the wealthy owner of Standard Oil. But for Rockefeller, selfish conservatives would have given it to the real estate developers and oil and gas companies.

Albright arranged for Rockefeller to visit the Snake River Valley. Witnessing its unparalleled beauty, Rockefeller told Albright, “I want to buy this land.” And he did just that.

He and Albright planned to expand existing park boundaries through Rockefeller’s donations of the land he purchased. When President Franklin Roosevelt issued a lawful Executive Order establishing the donated land a national monument, Wyoming conservatives of both political parties came unglued.

In an act of civil disobedience reminiscent of the Bundy boys, local ranchers moved more than 500 head of cattle onto the federal lands. One of their leaders was a Teton County rancher who would later become Wyoming’s Governor and U.S. Senator. Cliff Hansen led what Williams said was a “heavily armed” group of ranchers to try to undo what FDR and Rockefeller had done.

Opponents of setting aside the land which we now call Grand Teton National Park, referred to the supporters of expansion of the park’s boundaries as “Nazis.”

To his credit, as Cliff Hansen’s career progressed to the Governor’s Mansion and on to the United States Senate, he came to understand the value of the park and the national interest in protecting the land. Hansen later admitted it was not his finest hour. “I want you to know,” Williams quotes the man who once led the opposition, “that I’m glad I lost because I know I was wrong. Grand Teton National Park is one of the greatest national heritages of Wyoming and this nation, and one of our greatest assets.”

However, Wyoming conservatives have, over the years, won most of the state’s economic and political battles. That served the state’s powerful economic interests very well. However, the conservatives’ “search for moral justification for selfishness” explains why the state continues to find it impossible to sustain a diverse economy and retain many of the best and the brightest of the young people who are raised in the state.

Selfish conservatism has not served Wyoming well.