Utah’s exceptionalism stems from the Latter-day Saints’ deplorable opposition to the sexual revolution, animating its Republican affinities and consequently separation from the American mainstream. ‘Traditional morality conflicts with American ideals of freedom and equality’, Decker ventures (p. 343) without substantiation, not to mention why the GOP is beyond the pale. Further, as the author himself shows, the state’s strongly GOP character springs from resisting federal diktats. Preconceptions of normalcy trump the considerable evidence amassed: Decker is unwilling to grapple with civic purpose. The Mormon church and therefore Utah rely on ‘habit, culture, religion, which are hard to instill and not good tools for government’ (p. 347).
Having acquiesced to Washington’s animus against polygamy, Utah sought Washington’s favors over 1890-1940, particularly during the Depression – the only period of Democratic rule. Interestingly, this was also an era of net emigration. Then the postwar state eschewed economic growth for social alignment with the reactionary GOP. Notwithstanding the Salt Lake valley-rural dichotomy, the ‘Downwinder’ phenomenon described herein, and extensive opposition to US land and water management policies, propelled as they have been by unelected NGBs and bureaucrats as well as Democratic politics, for Decker religion is foremost: the LDS votes GOP, non-members Democrat, and thus the state is monocultural. (NB: per capita income in counties where the federal government owns most of the land is one-third lower than counties where the majority is otherwise.)
In the second part, the author shows state government evolved from corruption to integrity – save for the courts’ declining to follow the US Supreme Court’s progressive sociology and unaccountable education policy. More important, he reiterates the canard that one can’t (shouldn’t) legislate morality. There is also little effort to evaluate schools ‘outperform[ing] their poverty’ or other contrary metrics, not to mention his own observation that Utes are happy not angry. Surprisingly, Decker concludes quoting Strauss: neither Athens nor Jerusalem can triumph over the other. Yet the Hellenic city-state too sought not for modernity’s ‘low but solid’ goals but civic virtue.
Utah
13. Fradkin, Sagebrush Country (6 August 2021)
Characterizes era of land use in southwest Wyoming, northwest Colorado, and northeast Utah over 1850-1990, leading to the contemporary emergence of ‘colonial’ administration: external control of the land and its resources. Conflict began among Indians, trappers, (Mormon) settlers, and miners; featured railroaders and ranchers in the late 19th century; and in the 20th century has pit locals (especially land- and water-hungry ranchers and latter-day miners) against progressive conservationists and absolutist environmentalists, the latter two being coastal elites. The locals’ enduring fault has been to settle for get-rich-quick schemes, creating boom-bust cycles. They have also lacked foresight, for example those late 19th-century stockmen who might have bought land for pennies per acre but instead pursued free grazing, partially by ignoring early regulation. The set-asides created by federal legislation in 1891, 1897, 1907, and finally the Taylor Gazing Act of 1934 – Harold Ickes’ ‘magna carta’ of conservation, which claimed 140 million acres plus Indian reservation and much of Alaska for the public domain – solved the tragedy of the commons by establishing Washington’s preeminence, and triggered bureaucratic rivalry: the Bureau of Land Management on behalf outgunned ranchers, the Park Service for John Muir’s environmentalist heirs, and the Forest Service for successors to Gifford Pinchot’s progressives. The blockage of Echo Park dam, a campaign evidencing the influence of Bernard DeVoto and Eastern media, demonstrated the prevalent postwar dynamic. The author acknowledges but ultimately skips past the Reagan-era Sagebrush Rebellion.