Range Wars Over the Lands of the American West
Written by James Heiser
Friday, 30 October 2009
To state an obvious fact that will probably soon be illegal to acknowledge, there has long been a strong link between culture and region. Despite the best efforts of the cultural homogenizers — who want everyone to be reliable consumers who will eat, watch, wear and think the same thing, in the same way — even in these latter days of these United States, bland shopping malls and blander television-induced ‘popular culture’ haven’t managed to utterly destroy the glorious differences which have shaped this nation.
The history of our regional cultures is a complicated interplay of immigration history, religion, economics, and many other ‘human factors,’ but it is also fundamentally shaped by the land itself. For all of the pretensions about man ‘conquering’ nature, more often than not what really happens is that men learn the parameters of life in a particular region and either assent to that reality, or move, or die.
The bland life of the consumer is lived in rebellion against this fundamental aspect of life: shuttling between climate-controlled homes and offices, locked in cars listening to the same slush of premasticated pseudo-news and pseudo-music pumped into their vehicles as they drive by ‘big box’ stores and chain restaurants, the consumers may pretend that a region’s landscape and history is kind of like choosing a decorating theme for your house. But push them out of their artificial micro-environments and turn off the ‘grid’ for a few days and there could be a hope they might actually wake up to the reality which surrounds them.
For those of us who had the privilege of growing up and living most of our formative years west of the hundredth meridian, a realization forms pretty early in life that a lot of folks out East fundamentally will never understand the West — and we’re fine with that. Oh, on occasion the West will win a ‘convert’ from the East (Paleoconservative author Chilton Williamson comes to mind, for example), but such individuals really are the exception that proves the rule. Ignoring, for the moment, the further divisions within the broader region (differences with the West are also very real, and rooted in the same realities as the larger divisions), you understand that Easterners will view your land as something in between a theme park and game preserve, which has somehow become infested by undesirables. The federal obsession with locking up so much land out West arises from this sort of mentality; they view the West as essentially a really big Central Park — a nice place to visit, perhaps, but someplace that needs to be protected from the folks who would have the audacity to live there.
An experience I’ve enjoyed on several occasions is showing an Easterner the ‘pristine’ forests of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington — you can really get them going with pictures of ‘virgin forests’: “Surely this land must never be despoiled by man!” And then you show them the picture of the sign which identifies when that land was last clearcut. It is a case in point of the theme: “Yes, we know it’s beautiful; we live here. We’re even more interested in taking care of it than you are.”
In a recent column, Patrick Dorinson, the “Cowboy Libertarian” offers another example of this phenomena of outside interference in the life of the West. In “Why the Range War in the West Matters,” Dorinson explains that there is an effort underway to litigate significant elements of the Western way of life right out of existence.
Last July I wrote a piece here on the FOX Forum called “Range War in the West” in which I described how one outlaw environmental group, the Western Watersheds Project was trying to run ranchers and sheepherders off the public lands that belong to all of us and that the ranchers have used under permit and strict federal guidelines for 75 years.
And their weapon of choice? The lawsuit. They are using the Federal courts and a law meant to protect small businesses, farmers and ranchers from an overbearing and overreaching Federal government to put some of your fellow citizens out of business. Let me explain. Almost 30 years ago, with the best of intentions Congress passed the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA). Simply stated EAJA said that if the government had done wrong against small businesses, including farms and ranches, and they challenged the government in federal court, they would not have to go bankrupt awash in legal fees from protecting their rights. Call it a leveling of the playing field. If they were victorious in court, the government would have to pay their legal fees. Sounds fair right?
But as with all good intentions, there are some radical environmentalists who have figured out a way to use EAJA against those same small businesses in order to further their radical environmental goals. And even though they aren’t being sued directly the ranchers must hire lawyers to give them a seat at the table. Kind of like paying to watch your own hangin’.
In the last 10 years in one Federal District Court in Boise, Idaho, Western Watersheds Project has received $1,150,528.00 of your tax dollars for their jihad against the ranchers and sheep men. They have a found judge in that particular court that has been particularly accommodating to them and who seems to have his thumb on the scales of justice in their favor.
And that is just one organization. It is estimated that in that same time frame billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent settling these ridiculous legal claims. Here’s how it works. WWP sues the government challenging the rancher’s public land use permits on trumped up charges over water use or endangered species that aren’t really endangered, in the hope of having the permit rescinded. They tie up the ranchers in court and financially bleed them. They don’t have to win the case to be given your taxpayer money. The government which is a font of useless legal mumbo jumbo says they only have to “prevail” in the case. And guess who makes the decision whether they “prevail” or not? The Federal government!
With fundamental conflicts on so many fronts going on right now, it is easy for a struggle such as this “Range War” to be neglected. But we need to understand that it is simply one more front in the larger cultural struggle. In a wide range of areas of attack — from environmental extremism, to efforts to collectivize health care and various other industries, to the culturally destructive politics of the open-borders fanatics, and a wide variety of assaults on our civil liberties, the list goes on and on. Simply put, no small number of our own people have been taught to fear — even hate — the American way of life, with all of its richness and variation. They are far more content to live in cages fashioned according to the schemes of their leaders than they are to live as free men. For the rest of us, we may respect your choice for yourself, but don’t try to impose it on the rest of us.
Rt. Rev. James Heiser has served as Pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas, while maintaining his responsibilities as publisher of Repristination Press, which he established in 1993 to publish academic and popular theological books to serve the Lutheran Church. Heiser has also served since 2005 as the Dean of Missions for The Augustana Ministerium and in 2006 was called to serve as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). An advocate of manned space exploration, Heiser serves on the Steering Committee of the Mars Society. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius’ Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.
Veritas Vos Liberabit
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment