TY - JOUR T1 - The politics of conservation JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 255 LP - 258 VL - 37 IS - 5 AU - Philip M. Glick Y1 - 1982/09/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/37/5/255.abstract N2 - POLITICS is the lifeblood of a democracy. The lifeblood? That is not the prevailing view. On all sides we hear and read snickering references to politics. It is often scorned, even treated as a dirty word or accepted as a necessary evil in a world dominated by greed and ambition. We hear a congressman or governor dismissed with “he's just a politician”; a speech may be described as “just political rhetoric”; we sneer at “a quick political fix”; we remind ourselves with a shrug that “this is an election year.” We do ourselves a substantial disservice when we misunderstand and underrate a process that in fact serves us so well that it is indispensable. Just what are the functions and responsibilities of the political process? The tasks of politics In a democracy politics has two major tasks, and from these flow a hundred and one incidental chores. The first major task is to create political parties. Gilbert … ER -