OPINION/COMMENTARY

WARRIORS FOR THE WEST RELEASED IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Former United States Attorney General Edwin Meese III today assisted in the launching of William Perry Pendley’s latest book, Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America’s Frontier (Regnery 2006), at a speech and book signing hosted by The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. The event was the first in the national release of Warriors for the West, which documents nationally significant litigation by Mountain States Legal Foundation over the last decade and a half. Warriors puts a human face on westerners’ historic and often precedent-setting fights against environmental laws, “lying and cheating” bureaucrats and their ethically challenged lawyers, Clinton’s attacks on logging, mining, and energy exploration, government as a bullying bad neighbor, seizure of “private property” for “public use” without “just compensation,” and more. “These tales are not about victories and defeats but about men and women who, knowing that defeat was likely, undertook the fight anyway because if victory came it would have been worth it, not just for them but for all the others like them,” said William Perry Pendley. “They may not be heroes to everyone, but they are heroes to me.”....

Educational Indoctrination, "Environmental Style"

During my ephemeral teaching career in Los Angeles, there were numerous troubling examples of educational ludicrousness and lunacy. Of all the examples, the environmental "indoctrination" of my students was the most disconcerting. Doubtlessly, California schools' obsession with the environment is incomparable with most other states, but the anecdotal evidence I mentally compiled is striking. It wasn't only that the students were regularly pulled from my class at inopportune times to have the same information ingrained into their ten year-old minds, but rather, that the messages a high percentage of these groups pontificated were that human-beings are inherently bad people, animal killers, and are ruining our once-beautiful earth. Consider the presentation made by a college theater group from UCLA. Showing no interest in a balanced engagement with the issues, the group instead staged a 20-minute play whose theme can be summarized thusly and unfortunately: Once upon a time, the Earth was beautiful. Then humans came and destroyed it. To appreciate the effect of such simplistic narratives on students, consider the reaction of a confused little girl in my classroom. Visibly upset, she approached me after the play to ask: “Are we really ruining the Earth”? I did my best to explain, as objectively as possible, that the reality was a bit more complicated that the play would have her believe. But this had little effect. In case the numerous assemblies by theatre groups and yoga instructors proved inadequate to steeping the kids in environmentalist dogma, there were also field trips designed to achieve the same end. One that will always stand out was the "school journey" ("field trip" is no longer used in education) of choice for most teachers, called “Ocean Day. Organized by the Malibu Foundation, a non-profit group whose declared mission is “creating conservationists” out of school children, it was annual day set aside for environmental activism, or as it is euphemistically called, “in-school environmental education.”....

Arrogant Agencies

Ever notice the vegetation in “our” National Parks? Here in the East the vast majority of vegetation is grasses that are periodically mowed and timber stands that are never cut. Sure there is the exception like “The Cornfield” at Antietam where a vicious battle was fought in a cornfield that is replanted each year and the grain fields at Gettysburg through which Pickett and his men marched to the “copse of trees” and into history. Out west the average vegetation picture is different but basically similar. Uncut tree stands, either overgrazed (by totally “protected” wildlife) or ungrazed (by prohibited domestic animals) grasslands, and (as with all other National Parks) an eclectic mix of plants that are either touted or condemned as suits US National Park budget purposes. In and around all National Parks the wild animal populations are a disgraceful mix of harmful predators (wolves, bears, cougars, coyotes, raccoons, etc.) that are unmanaged and bold due to pet-like treatment in the Park and over-populations of grazing/browsing animals that decimate park vegetation and decrease other wildlife from songbirds to amphibians and reptiles by destroying their habitat. None of these animals or plants is managed in any real sense by the AA (Arrogant Agency) known as the National Park Service. While the nation is well-populated by hunters that would pay to take prescribed numbers of the deer and elk and trappers that would likewise pay to take the predators in ways and places that would not endanger any visitors or undesignated wildlife, such common sense management and revenue generation is never spoken. And the National Park Service gets more lands, more people, and bigger budgets each year....