The Dice Heard ‘Round the Commonwealth

The Dice Heard ‘Round the Commonwealth

Rejecting Massachusetts’ Looming Low Road to Casinos

The prospects of what some are calling 15,000 permanent jobs and $355 million in annual state revenues to be derived by extending gambling are salivated over now because the lens people are looking through is only shaped to see money and jobs in the midst of one of the nation’s worst economies; they do not see casinos as lasting institutions that will be with us dotting the landscape forevermore.

Are people so uncultured to not be able to see casinos as institutions in society, which by being sanctioned claim legitimacy from now on for generations to come? Should a child grow up to think of Massachusetts as a place where they once visited a casino, rather than how at one point they took a field trip there to Old Sturbridge Village or Plimoth Plantation?

To know that Massachusetts is one of the wealthiest and indeed the highest educated state in the country and it is still racing to “get in the game” alongside such competitors as Rhode Island and Connecticut can make anyone truly sick. Rhode Island and Connecticut were settled by peoples originally from the Massachusetts Colony. Why should Massachusetts settle its economic troubles by trodding down the paths of others?

The “shot heard ‘round the world”, the most significant event in Massachusetts history, defines Massachusetts eternally as the birthplace of America and concurrently the birthplace of modern democracy. It follows that Massachusetts set its own course and did not follow the lead of the other colonies in seeking independence from Britain’s tyranny.

The coining of the phrase “shot heard ‘round the world” was done by Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most influential American philosophers who founded Transcendentalism and offered Thoreau his land to build his camp on near the shores of Walden Pond in Concord. Emerson and Thoreau are among the most relevant political philosophers on the world stage and are two figures who would aggressively oppose casinos in their beloved Commonwealth.

To those who would banter and bray that casinos would create thousands of good-paying jobs, Thoreau would retort, “Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.” This quote in fact comes from Thoreau’s essay “Life without Principle”. It informs us that we cannot make work just to make work.

To those that side with resort casinos and all of those “good jobs” that they would bring—namely bar tending, bar waitressing, gaming cashiering—is there any one among you who would vouch for the dignity of such jobs? Senate President Murray? Senate President Pro Tem Rosenberg? Governor Patrick? On Senator Rosenberg’s website’s homepage there is one of his quotes staring you in the eye: “The best way to win someone’s trust is to tell the truth; clearly, forcefully, directly.”

Thoreau writes further in “Life without Principle”: “The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get ‘a good job,’ but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay it laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends.” Work at a casino will precisely be working for low ends.

In 2008, the Massachusetts House strongly rejected casinos, voting against them 108-46. This past April the House supported casinos 120-37. This proves that a question of morality, philosophy, and principle is answered only on the whims of the current state of the economy and on the fact that the government of Rhode Island is making money that Massachusetts is losing out on.

Casinos came to Las Vegas’ barren land and gave it life and lights, as its wasteland had nothing to offer; yet, casinos will come to Massachusetts cultured lands and will bring to them only death. How will the historical treasures that line the quaint New England towns of Massachusetts feel in the company of glinting resort casinos just down the road? They surely will not be the same.

By Brian Wolfel