By Eric Valentine
There’s a reason why Alexander the Great is called “great” and other folks who conquered almost as much, just as much, or more, are not. Reader’s Digest version: He didn’t just conquer an area, he made it flourish. And he made it flourish not by just building roads or reinforcing arenas. The world under Alexander flourished because he spread Greek culture—specifically, in matters of education and with an expression of the arts.
Alexander’s influence was so great that the culture we attribute to Rome is us being a tad generous to the Romans. Those cultural elements are almost entirely Greek, and only thought of as Roman or Greco-Roman because when the empire of Rome spread, they knew they already had a good thing. Disney didn’t fix Star Wars, Disney bought the brand.
I bring all this up for two reasons. The first reason is because our political leaders have found a way to disagree about a whole range of things humans shouldn’t really disagree about. Things like paying for childcare for working parents and high-speed internet access for all. It’s not that any elected official doesn’t see the value of these things. The issue is whether those things should be considered infrastructure. I’ll spare you the Webster’s definition, the traditional political spending meaning, and the reasonable 21st century meaning, because by the time elected officials agreed to call some stuff traditional infrastructure and other stuff soft infrastructure, they began arguing about how to pay for everything.
While I personally am for a New Deal level of government expenditure, this column is not about spelling out or refuting the merits of it all. Nor is it about explaining how it can be paid for. Instead, it’s about what the 4th Estate column is supposed to be about: looking at how the media, politicians and the culture in general have gone about articulating their thoughts and feelings. Poorly, I’d say.
We live in a free country with a 1st Amendment on paper and a sense of free political will in our minds. We get to choose our own course, a new course, and whatever course of action we decide is best for society as a whole. Infrastructure is whatever we do or invest in that does the same thing—help us take actions that are good for society as a whole. I figured Congress would debate who to tax most to pay for it all, but I didn’t think they’d argue about what infrastructure is.
To not understand that high-speed internet and green energy are as purely infrastructure as it gets is to not be in touch with the world’s evolution over the last 30 years. To not understand that childcare and clean water delivery is infrastructure is to not have true family values. And to find yourself agreeing with whatever is your party’s party line, is to find yourself lost in the weeds of day to day life.
And that’s what brings me to my final point. We should be adding education and the arts to our definition of infrastructure. Education and the arts are the food and water supply of freedom. Starting Thursday night, you can support and enjoy one current implementation of the education and arts infrastructure by attending the Sun Valley Community School’s presentation of “Legally Blonde: The Musical.” It’s the first time in a long time the private school students, families and staff will gather in one place at one time all in the name of self-expression—both the cause and effect of a healthy and robust infrastructure.