(Note: This gem of an article by our friend, Jim Beers, contains such educational facts as this: " ... the environmental and animal rights anarchists provide a case history of how a fox can be made to appear as a hen in the henhouse ... " It is a must-read for those seeking to understand 'how this has happened to us.)

January 28, 2003

By Jim Beers jimbeers7@earthlink.net

Beginning in the late 1800s and up to the First World War, anarchists were revolutionaries bent on destroying the established governmental order from the Russian Ural Mountains -- westward through Europe and North America to the Pacific Ocean.

Spies, riot organizers, agitators, bombers, and propagandists -- all were identified at one time or another as anarchists.

While G. K. Chesterton described British anarchists as vegetarians and bored intellectuals bent on disorder, Russian anarchists became the cells and bones of Lenin and Trotsky in their violent establishment of communism.

In America, necessary improvements in labor and the abuses of very rich "barons" became the vehicles of agitators determined to radically alter the United States.

In all cases, anarchist agendas resulted in death and disorder -- bringing about the Russian revolution and World War I.

After the First World War, the Russian communist government used anarchy as the tool to destabilize non-communist nations and thereby make them vulnerable to absorption into a communist organization of states under the control and direction of Moscow.

In the 1920s Hitler used the techniques of anarchy to maintain the destabilization of German society until his assumption of all power in the early 1930s.

After the Second World War, China, Yugoslavia, and North Korea saw the ways in which anarchy can be the vehicle for the assumption by one leader of absolute power.

Later, still other nations experienced anarchy.

Some -- like Cuba and Vietnam -- saw it extinguish freedom.

Others like Nicaragua and Greece weathered the storm of anarchy and began a rebuilding of freedom.

The recent antiwar demonstrations on The Mall in Washington gave us all a rare glimpse of the anarchists we are dealing with today in the United States.

Marxist liberation fronts, Trotskyites, and Islamist terrorists joined peace-at-any-cost campaigners, racial dividers, and a hodgepodge of environmental and animal rights activists to demean the President and American society and values.

It is these last two groups (environmentalists and animal rights radicals) that I wish to address from the perspective of their fomenting anarchy.

My motive is not to gain satisfaction from calling them bad names -- it is to examine the threat they pose -- and the way in which these particular anarchists are operating so effectively today.

Only by understanding them can we hope to preserve our free society.

Anarchists have always touted common goals.

Religion is destructive and must be controlled or destroyed.

Guns should only be possessed by government agents.

The current leaders are vile if they are not fully supportive of constant radical changes -- from where people live to what they eat and where they work.

Private property must be abolished and a vast bureaucracy should control the populace -- at the behest of leaders committed to command and control of anything and everything that catches their eye.

Today globalization is opposed -- while UN controls are sought -- for everything from wetlands and guns to response to terrorism by affected states.

While protesters remain unknown in the Chinas, North Koreas, and Vietnams, they are unified throughout the free world by European and United States chapters and units -- who share resources and work together.

The big difference today is their specialization and compartmentalizing those they affect -- which results in an astounding level of public tolerance.

While there are still pure anti-defense groups and pure racial divider groups, the environmental and animal rights anarchists provide a case history of how a fox can be made to appear as a hen in the henhouse.

Environmentalists disrupt society and keep making ever-greater demands by specializing and compartmentalizing who they affect at any give time.

The Sierra Club pushes Roadless Area expansions and the closure of (millions of miles of) other roads -- and it is having success with this agenda.

The Wilderness Society constantly proposes new Wilderness designations and expansion of current Wilderness areas -- and current bills before the 108th Congress prove the success of its directives.

The Natural Resources Defense Council employs batteries of lawyers -- to implement everything from preventing oil, gas, or coal extraction -- to outlawing ownership of large vehicles [SUVs].

One of the smaller groups, Earthjustice, employs 50 lawyers and spends $18 million a year to put 100 national lawsuits per year before specific radical courts like the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

All of these groups are ultimately aimed to eliminate property rights -- whether those be our common property rights in public lands or the "worst" of all rights, private property rights which have been the backbone of this nation since its founding.

They work with government workers and politicians to justify and expand the illegal and extremely lucrative "taking without compensation" resulting from Endangered Species hokum.

Meanwhile they all deny any connection with the radicals that are spiking trees or killing cattle.

They profess to have no knowledge of SUV's being torched on auto lots -- to intimidate citizens and courts.

Likewise, animal rights groups specialize and compartmentalize those whom they effect at any given time.

The Humane Society of the U.S. spends millions annually -- to eliminate pet ownership.

The Animal Welfare Institute works constantly to outlaw trapping, fur farming and the use of fur.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) concentrates on eliminating everything from the eating of meat to fishing (commercial AND sportfishing -- good-bye, 'Andy of Mayberry' and Opie with his fishing pole!).

One group concentrates on eliminating the use of animals to test medical products -- while another specializes in eliminating the farming of animals for food and other products.

There are groups like Greenpeace who concentrate on eliminating whaling -- and those like Defenders of Wildlife, who work to eliminate hunting and ranching. DOW is forcing the reintroduction of large and dangerous predators -- and not just in the western states or in rural areas.

They all work with the National Abortion Rights Action League to get a court to declare that some animal has "rights" -- so that those rights can then be declared for other animals, sequentially.

There are many more groups and examples, but space is limited.

All of these deny any connection with those who attack medical experimenters with baseball bats -- or who burn down or bomb laboratories.

They deny any connection with young girls that are sent to release thousands of fur farm mink from their cages.

They deny any connection with violence against the families of trappers.

They deny any connection with stolen dogs or staged photographs of suffering animals.

Both of these factions are successful at recruiting movie stars and media communicators -- just as their communist predecessors were in the middle of the last century.

They are, like their predecessors, very successful at painting their opponents as "kooks" -- while snickering about conspiracies with government employees.

They appeal to teachers -- who find their philosophies "progressive" and therefore worthy of emphasis -- and so teach their young charges.

Unlike their predecessors, they are very successful at gaining public sympathy and donations for causes blown out of all proportion by sympathetic TV and newspaper coverage.

The millions thus generated are used to help reelect pandering politicians, hire lobbyists and activist staffs.

These staff persons are then placed in key government jobs -- that no longer have requirements of substance -- by political bosses during favorable administrations.

The facts are that all of these environmental and animal rights organizations WORK TOGETHER.

Go an the Animal Rights Conference and watch the coordination and recruitment of violent radicals sharing information on how to intimidate families of opponents.

Watch how the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council work together to vilify and prevent the extraction of desperately needed fuel resources from public lands or offshore.

Look at the Congressional Record of notoriously disruptive laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Animal Welfare Act -- and see who said what.

Sit through one of the UN meetings of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species -- and see who is giving what to delegates to get their votes on matters that don't concern them directly.

Ask in government offices about the meetings with these groups -- where coordination of regulation wording and lawsuit bases is effected.

Listen in on the "key" phone calls by certain sympathetic politicians to both political bosses and career employees working on Endangered Species or Roadless rules.

Then there is the compartmentalizing of those affected at any given time.

Soccer moms in Boston are tickled to vote to outlaw traps in Massachusetts -- no one really cares about a few trappers.

Tomorrow it is some rancher fighting a road closure in Nevada (let's see, where is Nevada again?).

Next week it is some nut in Montana complaining about a few wolves that are killing cattle and decimating big game herds.

A month ago it was some dog owners complaining about illegal search and seizure of their dogs.

Who was that pouring paint on women wearing fur while destroying furriers' businesses?

Then it was some lab employee being harassed on the golf course.

What about the Oregon and Florida landowners claiming they were being forced to sell their property to the government?

I hear they don't manage mountain lions in many places now -- and that this has resulted in many deaths.

The government buys HOW MUCH land each year?

What about all that silly scare stuff about a Wildlands Project to depopulate large swaths of the United States?

Let's see, if bear baiting and hunting bears with dogs are "unsporting" why not just eliminate bear hunting?

Well, maybe millions of acres being critical to a fly is a bit much, but what would the earth be like without it?

Well, yes, there are millions of wild wolves worldwide and there are bighorn sheep all over the western mountains, but the Endangered Species Listing process listed them and that means ...

Where the anarchists of yesterday threatened us all at once (one of their former honchos, Khrushchev, told us "we will bury you"), it was much easier to see the threat and react accordingly.

Where anarchists of yesteryear were mostly spies, bombers, agitators, and propagandists -- today they are lawyers, fund-raisers, and they are photogenic.

Today they no longer operate in the shadows -- although they still plot there.

Today they knock on your door during dinner and catch your (and your children's) eye as you channel-surf and see the cheetah running free.

They "partner" with politicians, judges, and bureaucrats -- to do harmful things that are specifically prohibited in our Constitution.

It is only a personal opinion from a retired wildlife biologist, but I think it is important for all of us to understand what is happening here.

It seems that these two factions are a much larger segment of today's anarchy proponents than ever before.

Make no mistake that their goal, like the anti-defense crowd and the race dividers, is a radically altered American society -- where the central government and the UN will continue to expand what they control and dictate -- while the individual and his rights will diminish proportionately.

Soon enough the only difference between the Chinese and us will be geographic if they continue to operate successfully.

Ben Franklin said it best when he said if we don't hang together, we will all hang separately.

The specialization of these groups and the compartmentalizing of those affected are working far better than most of us realize.