Monstrosities like fracking can only happen in societies where government is conceived as not playing the role of the steward of the common good and the common land. Government should exist to promote the general welfare, to protect the weak from the depredations of the strong, to prevent accumulations of power that could undermine the state's supremacy, and to be the steward of our commonwealth, including stuff like, you know, the tectonic plates. This should be beyond argument by now. That it is not tells us that the republic is in crisis.

American politics is being increasingly steered by a doctrine of governmental paralysis and uncontested corporate plunder. The energy companies, the banks, and the health insurance companies write the laws that govern them and hand them to the members of Congress who do their bidding. Simultaneously, in the name of budget cuts, they are waging a campaign to dismantle state apparatuses to the point where regulation becomes impossible. The state of Pennsylvania, according to the Times, has 31 inspectors for more than 125,000 oil and gas wells. The state's new Republican governor, Tom Corbett, plans to reopen state lands for even more drilling. The results will be more drilling, less regulation, more earthquakes, more poisoned water supplies, more failure of government to govern. This is not the free market; it's corporate enslavement of government.

If the republic does collapse into oligarchy, we would not be the first great society to fall, but do we have to take the earth down with us? Thanks to hydraulic fracturing, we are doing more than breaking up the republic: we are breaking up the geological integrity of the land on which the republic stands. And the saddest thing about it is that we know it's happening, yet we lack the political ability to stop it.