Inquirer Editorial: Nation interrupted

In 1777, George Washington's bedraggled Continental Army hunkered down at Valley Forge for a winter that one in five would not survive. In marking the centennial of that season, the Philadelphia lawyer Henry Armitt Brown alluded to the 23d Psalm, calling the former encampment "this valley of the shadow of that death out of which the life of America rose."

The nation born of that struggle is now struggling to marshal its vast resources to maintain Valley Forge as a swath of lightly staffed open space. Worse, the fraction of its government still functioning is busy doing what the British couldn't: routing Americans from the site.

Last week, John Bell, an avid marathoner from Chadds Ford, got a $100 ticket from federal rangers for running through Valley Forge National Historical Park while it was closed due to the government shutdown. Bell and his lawyer have vowed to fight the fine on principle, arguing that the park's closure amounts to unnecessary nuisance-making.

They aren't the first to accuse the Obama administration of pursuing the so-called Washington Monument strategy - targeting popular attractions for closure to maximize public ire. The storming of Washington's mothballed World War II Memorial by elderly veterans provided occasion for irony-defying protests by some of the Republican representatives who forced the shutdown. And a few reports claimed open-air monuments like the Lincoln Memorial were not barricaded during the 1995-96 shutdowns - though contemporary reports show they were.

Some of the barriers deployed around Philadelphia's Independence Mall and other national park sites do appear to be devoid of a purpose other than annoyance. But given that most of the National Park Service's workforce has been furloughed, officials say they have to close even outdoor monuments to keep them and the public secure.

Ultimately, the back-and-forth about how the government is closed distracts from the fact that it shouldn't be - that no first-world country should take unscheduled vacations. For every symbolic, debatable, headline-grabbing closure of a monument, the shutdown has countless lower-profile but serious consequences for the country and its people, from unpaid workers to untreated illnesses.

In commemorating the winter of 1777-78, Brown hoped that to future generations, the "Union will seem as dear . . . and progress as glorious as they were to our fathers." At this point, though, we aren't exactly jogging in the bloody footprints of Valley Forge's Continentals.