April 26, 2003

By Jim Beers

jimbeers7@earthlink.net

People have been oppressed by rulers since time began. Human pursuits like practicing religion, hunting, fishing, trapping, logging, ranching, owning property, owning weapons, owning pets, conducting businesses involving natural resources, and even raising your family or educating your children were, more often than not, proscribed or prohibited by rulers. Rulers and their cronies reserved things like hunting and fishing for themselves. Other things like religion and your family life were controlled in the name of the state. Still others like businesses or property or weapons were only allowed for the favored few. Money allowed after taxes was strictly at the generosity of the leader. Whether we called them Czars, Dictator, King, Fuehrer, Emperor, Warlord, or Chieftain; the end result was always, eventually the same. Look to Christian martyrs or Jewish nationalists under Rome; look to Scots under English Kings or the Irish under Cromwell; or look to Russians and Chinese under Communism to confirm where absolute central power leads everyone.

The Founding Fathers ratified a Constitution that, insofar as humanly possible, specifically guaranteed things like private property, freedom to practice religion, and a right to bear arms. They placed the jurisdiction over natural resources and businesses along with traditional resource uses like ranching and logging under state governments. Family life and education of your children were examples of those "powers" mentioned in the 10th Amendment as "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states" and "therefore reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Remember the first three words of our Constitution are "We the People." That meant that WE wrote the thing and granted certain and limited powers to government. Today, more and more of us accept the pernicious notion that government grants us things.

The miracle of this document for 200 years has been the way that the poorest among us have come to enjoy the "rights" of Kings and Czars. While other countries have enjoyed these "rights" temporarily, anyone who listens or reads knows that the right to bear arms and private property and the freedom to hunt or fish or trap is steadily eroding or gone in Europe and in the former colonies of England. Freedom of religion, private property, and the ability to raise your family as you see fit is unknown throughout much of the world. The inability to keep your profit from work or own property is a major factor in so much of what we call the Third World cycle of poverty and poor health.

There are two major threats to this American miracle. The first is from without. There are the obvious North Koreas and Al Qaedas who would physically destroy us given the opportunity. There are the United Nations who covet our strength and power and collectively want us to be reduced to their control in what we do and how we do it. There is the European Union and China who in competing with us, want to disadvantage us in order to equal or exceed our market share or influence worldwide. Some of these threats are deadly and others are a natural and ever-present phenomenon of human societies.

In my opinion, the most dangerous threat to the miracle is that which originates within. Some citizens, certain politicians, government agencies, and wealthy private organizations are determined to curtail and eliminate these freedoms from the guaranteed right to bear arms to the traditional right to fish and hunt. While I could use examples like energy restrictions or ranching or resource businesses to make this point, I will use hunting, since it is an area with which I am familiar to describe current events. Keep in mind that a similar description could be developed for any of dozens of other such freedoms that are being curtailed and eliminated similarly and simultaneously.

WHO is enabling the elimination of hunting? Politicians hoping to maintain and increase support and votes from groups like urban residents, soccer moms, and "environmentalists." Federal bureaucrats seeking more authority, money for their salaries, more personnel, and more largesse (grants) to dispense to states, Universities, and "environmental partners." Wealthy and powerful non-governmental organizations like HSUS, NRDC, Sierra Club, Animal Welfare Institute, Wilderness Society, PETA, Nature Conservancy, and others of these sorts receiving government grants and financial support from supporters opposed to hunting. State agencies and their lobby group who receive increasing financial support from the Federal government to buy them off and whose defense of hunting rights is tepid because they believe that hunting is on its way out. Finally the Ducks Unlimiteds and other hunter groups that collect millions from sportsmen at sporting oriented banquets and then go AWOL when guns are registered or confiscated (Canada and Australia) claiming they are "conservationists."

HOW is hunting being eliminated? There are many ways:

-Through closure of public land access by Wilderness and Roadless declarations.

-Through weapons restrictions as in Illinois and Massachusetts.

-Through ballot initiatives to prevent hunting of species as cougars in California.

-Through regulatory eliminations of means to hunt like dogs or bait for bears.

-Through increased Federal authorities like proposed Invasive Species programs.

-Through Endangered Species listings and Critical Habitat declarations.

-Through acceptance of the Federal government to take private property without compensation which is specifically prohibited in the Constitution.

-Through restrictions on state fish and wildlife agencies like Federal bureaucrats dictating new Pittman Robertson requirements and National Environmental Protection Act requirements to stifle fish and wildlife management.

-Through lawsuits and other disruptions of fish and wildlife management programs to interrupt the flow of license money necessary to maintain management programs.

-Through indoctrination of the young by propaganda in the schools and on television and in movies.

-Through intimidation and demonstrations.

-Through collaboration with UN bureaucrats bent on restricting hunting in America as they have elsewhere.

-Through excessive and onerous enforcement of laws and regulations so as to discourage honest people from participating due to fear.

-Through public depictions by the media and bureaucrats that deny wild game is good food, that trophies or fur are legitimate uses of renewable natural resources, that hunting benefits environmental management both financially and biologically, or that the tradition of hunting is worth respecting and preserving.

I could go on but I think this makes the point.

In summary, more and more are a few dictating to the many whether we look solely at hunting or at all of the other freedoms and rights enjoyed by Americans. History tells us time and again that inexorably power is accumulated at the highest point if at all possible. This accumulation was stymied by our separation of powers both between the states and Federal government and by the three branches of the Federal government for two centuries. What we see now is more and more Federal power over more and more human activities while state governments give some powers up gladly for Federal funds and many large city mayors are increasingly de facto political bosses of the state governments. As urban centers rule states like Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, and others they enable agendas that eliminate freedoms such as hunting that are of no matter in the city. The election of national leaders reveals a growing and determined split between the rural voters and the urban voters. As the cities exercise more power and the state governments surrender jurisdiction to Federal jurisdiction creations, we evolve in a retrospective way to the warlord system we found in Afghanistan after 9-11 where chieftains, like big city mayors, dictate their values over wide areas. For now, the Federal government enables this trend but eventually all of this new authority to dictate what animals are where and who may hunt and what property owners must do or cannot do will only increase and migrate to the top as it always has. Too soon Federal bureaucrats and the President will once again exercise the power of Kings and We the People will return to the serf status that our ancestors knew and fled in a forgotten past.

In the meantime, hunters don't even come together for each other much less for the rancher or the caviar importer. The rural Iowa resident feels no need to help the rural Wyoming resident. This while the urban residents and those organizations collect money, stay on target, sing from the same page of music, and support the politicians and bureaucrats who enable their agendas. It's time we started doing the same thing.