Just read an interesting article over at NEW WEST. Entitled "The Pathetically Western Reply", Christian Probasco begins by giving a nice summary of Wallace Stegner's critique of the west. He then replies, part of which follows:

They can answer that the cowboys who herd cattle in wilderness areas generally don’t want to conduct their operations under somebody else’s control or even surveillance, and if they did, they wouldn’t belong on that frontier in the first place. They can answer that westerners whose livelihoods are tied to the surrounding land don’t mistrust federal intervention just because it comes from outside, they mistrust it because it is based on whims and because it seesaws, and because they suspect the federal government is ultimately after control of their water and their environment and hence, them. They can reply that individualism, with all its inherent flaws, is also the cornerstone of every freedom we now enjoy....