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.S.counties comparableto Ravalli County, and personal income itself is low in Ravalli County.Evenby the low school-funding standards of the state of Montana, RavalliCounty school funding stands out as low.Most Ravalli County school dis-tricts keep their spending down to the absolute minimum required byMontana state law.The average salaries of Montana schoolteachers rankamong the lowest in the U.S., and especially in Ravalli County those lowsalaries plus soaring land prices make it hard for teachers to afford housing.Montana-born children are leaving the state because many of them as-pire to non-Montana lifestyles, and because those who do aspire to Mon-tana lifestyles can't find jobs within the state.For instance, in the years sinceSteve Powell graduated from Hamilton High School, 70% of his classmateshave left the Bitterroot Valley.Without exception, all of my friends whochose to live in Montana discussed, as a painful subject, whether their chil-dren had remained or would come back.All eight of Allen and JackieBjergo's children, and six of Jill and John Eliel's eight children, are now liv-ing outside Montana.To quote Emil Erhardt again, "We in the Bitterroot Valley export chil-dren.Outside influences, like TV, have now made our children aware ofwhat's available outside the valley, and what's unavailable inside it.Peoplebring their children here because of the outdoors, and because it's a greatplace to bring up kids, but then their children don't want the outdoors." Irecall my own sons, who love coming to Montana to fish for two weeks inthe summer but are accustomed to the urban life of Los Angeles for the restof the year, expressing shock as they came out of a Hamilton fast-foodrestaurant and realized how few urban recreational opportunities wereavailable to the local teenagers who had just waited on them.Hamilton hasthe grand total of two movie theatres, and the nearest mall is 50 miles awayin Missoula.A similar shock grows on many of those Hamilton teenagersthemselves, when they travel outside Montana and realize what they aremissing back at home.Like rural western Americans in general, Montanans tend to be conserva-tive, and suspicious of governmental regulation.That attitude arose histori-cally because early settlers were living at low population density on afrontier far from government centers, had to be self-sufficient, and couldn'tlook to government to solve their problems.Montanans especially bristleat the geographically and psychologically remote federal government inWashington, D.C., telling them what to do.(But they don't bristle at the fed-eral government's money, of which Montana receives and accepts about adollar-and-a-half for every dollar sent from Montana to Washington.) Inthe view of Montanans, the American urban majority that runs the federalgovernment has no comprehension of conditions in Montana.In the viewof federal government managers, Montana's environment is a treasurebelonging to all Americans and is not there just for the private benefit ofMontanans.Even by Montana standards, the Bitterroot Valley is especially conserva-tive and anti-government.That may be due to many early Bitterroot settlershaving come from Confederate states, and to a further influx of bitter right-wing conservatives from Los Angeles after that city's race riots.As ChrisMiller said, "Liberals and Democrats living here weep as they read the re-sults after each election, because the outcomes are so conservative." Extremeproponents of right-wing conservativism in the Bitterroot are members ofthe so-called militias, groups of landowners who hoard weapons, refuse topay taxes, keep all others off their property, and are variously tolerated orelse regarded as paranoid by other valley residents.One consequence of those political attitudes in the Bitterroot is opposi-tion to governmental zoning or planning, and a feeling that landownersshould enjoy the right to do whatever they want with their private property [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]