Judged by what is right … or what we do?

Adams Doctrine

Judged by what is right … or what we do?

Water, mammary Supports and free ranging Chickens

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Many of us have come to recognize secularism is a religion. It has all the character of any religion complete with saints, and apostles, prophets, and, of course, the precious deity.

            The deity forms the basis of the greatest distinction that separates it from Christianity. That distinction is the focus and the object of the adulation.

In the case of environmental secularism, ‘object’ gives way to ‘objects’, and those objects are constantly transforming. Today, it could be a loveable, intrinsic fuzz ball. To deep thinking subjects of the extrinsic domain, tomorrow it could be a viewscape of a sewer farm.

The intrinsic objects range from the sun itself, to spike dace and loach minnows, wolves, and even prairie chickens. The extrinsic counterparts can get even more complicated. They could range from abortion rights to the objections of the use of leaf blowers. Bottom line, there is something new to each and every secularist each and every moment … it is simply the prerogative of the new secularist to declare his or her newest object of adulation!

The Adams Doctrine

For too long, too many conscientious Americans have been snookered into believing there are certain constants that cannot be challenged. Here in parched New Mexico, we have become locked into the mindset our water supply is finite, what we have is what we get, and for all of eternity we have to continue to trim our meager portion for the good of all.

To this, I must defer to John Adams. Idiosyncrasies aside, anybody who could run a farm, maintain a legal practice, contribute the astounding body of ideas and foundation that became fundamental to our political system, and maintain a life long, loving relationship with his wife was a man of qualities that we should all emulate.

It is profound that President Adams was a nonbeliever of the premise we should pray only for what we perceive is right. His belief was we could pray for what we perceive as right, but, if we didn’t act, no amount of divine intervention would ever help us.

Rather, his belief was predicated on the creator’s gift of freewill to us for us to act on our own behalf to change our lives and our predicaments. In the Adams belief system, we are to be judged not on the basis of our purity of thought, but on the purity and resourcefulness of our actions.  Even if we are wrong, we will still be judged on the courage and commitment to prevail.

Think of that. Adams believed a man could spend a lifetime enduring what he perceived was adherence to the high road, but, without self action to correct the problem, no amount of praying will save him.

There is such abundant relief in that!

Gila Fever

The folks in the New Mexico watershed of the Gila River have long lived with the long knives of the New Age secularists. The latter can be spotted variously but they first arrived in the ‘60s. They became more abundant in the decades since. Today, they entrenched in a network of national influence. Too many of them still think that free ranging chickens and mammary truss assists are incongruous!

In a settlement with the State of Arizona, New Mexico was awarded additional 14,000 acre feet of Gila River water, annually. The award remains conditional on the capture and storage of flood water. There is a deadline to act and the time is running out. A real threat to the loss of the settlement is looming.

The folks trying to make something happen face a dual problem. The first is the polarization of New Mexico congressional leadership. The second stems from the Church of Secularism doctrine impasse.

The Gila is a free flowing river. It is a wonderful place. I know. I call Cliff, New Mexico my real heritage home. Most of the things I hold dear were derived from my childhood spent there with my grandparents. Solutions, though, are best fashioned for the benefit of a community that can support itself. The secular alternative threatens all self support.

‘Can’t’ is the byline. In every approach, a viable solution is being squelched. In every alternative, an environmental obstacle surfaces to block an idea and a solution. Secularists don’t want solutions. They want control and they must have division to maintain control.

Then their propaganda machine goes to work. In the press are reoccurring references to the abstract concept of the real need for the water. No, a desert community doesn’t need 14,000 acre feet of water! What were those folks thinking anyway?

To the Butte and a bigger picture

Water constraints in New Mexico aren’t confined to the Gila. The storage in the state’s largest reservoir, Elephant Butte, remains near historical low levels. The snow pack of the southern Rockies and the Rio Grande watershed is dismal. Water users in the Elephant Butte Water District are expecting to receive six acre inches for the year. That is two and a half acre feet under what is considered a normal allocation.

Politics has played into the edginess as the United States has forced the release of waters demanded downstream by Mexico. All sides are posturing and fidgeting under the specter of an increasing conflict. Does a water war loom on the Rio Grande?

How about the West?

How about the world?

It can be documented that drought and its aftermath with famine pose the greatest natural risk to all of mankind. In the drought of October, 2010 to October, 2011 our ranch received 1.75” of rain. We thought we were hard hit.

In the same period, the drought in Somalia was yet more devastating. As much as 80% of all livestock owned by nomadic tribesmen died of starvation. As many as 50,000 people died and as many as 13 million needed assistance.

Drought can be horrendous, but it is also the most manageable of all natural disasters. A hurricane cannot be tamed nor can a tornado, a tsunami, or even a hailstorm. We can manage drought, though, and we are managing it more effectively than most suspect or give credit.

 We have and we can build water supply infrastructure. We can and we have engineered delivery systems. We can and we have contained floods. We can and we have learned to convert drought conditions to centers of recreation and national pastimes.

As last year’s historic floods in the Mississippi basin were being chronicled daily on national news, New Mexicans simply could not comprehend the amount of water flowing through those relief structures along the river. There was idle speculation there was enough water boiling through those gates to fill Elephant Butte in a couple of days.

We were wrong. There was enough water boiling through one of those gates in Louisiana to fill the more than 2.3 million acre foot pool at Elephant Butte in 18 hours!

Such factors reveal a larger truth. We are only temporarily water short. We have come to the next series of constraints and must deal with the issue.

Our situation today is not unlike those folks who first tried to farm in the Rio Grande Valley before the dam was built. It was the same in the Phoenix Valley and every other valley across the West. None of those early settlers could have envisioned what was done when free and independent men were allowed to act to create managed systems for the control and distribution to life giving water.

The reality is we have been conditioned to believe that our system is at its zenith … that what water supply we have is all we are entitled to get under the secular manuscript of morality.

The Adams persistence

The environmental agenda has hamstrung us because we are trapped in the deficient juxtaposition of the Adams doctrine. We pray for relief in various forms of actions that have not and will not solve our problems. Solutions will come only from the allowance to act, and, more importantly, the direct actions of motivated, issue focused free and independent men and women.

If you believe in that premise you must also believe in the inherent mechanism for self correction. Each constraint revealed will prompt a new and issue focused body of free and independent men and women.

Can this be tested? It has … enough logic was built into our system that the system has survived the onslaught of the secularists from the onset of our history. We have survived in spite of them!

Are there modern era prophets? If there are, there must be several from that body of men who conceived the concepts of our system, and … John Adams must be included.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “I have come to admire men who seek not help from many, but prefer the trust of few.”