March 14, 2003

By Jim Beers

jimbeers7@earthlink.net

There is an eruption of anti-hunting and anti-dog use legislation in California. Proposals to ban white-wing dove hunting and the use of dogs to hunt any mammal are front and center. Just as Californians banned cougar hunting years ago and paid with more human deaths and injuries, so too will the reduction in bear harvests result in more bear encounters and bolder bears. When dove hunting is banned, next year it will be the turn of ducks or grouse. There is no difference between these things and the elimination of logging, ranching, fishing, trapping, rodeos, circuses, pets, medical use of animals, animal husbandry, and a whole host of other activities of free Americans.

The people behind this are socialists. They are people who understand that in the free American Republic, they would never be able to achieve their goals. What are their goals? The neighbor lady who scowls at me as I come home from a hunt in a camouflage shirt wants to eliminate hunting. The neighbor who winces at your NRA car sticker wants to eliminate all gun ownership. The vegan veterinary student wants to eliminate mink farms and trapping. The soccer Mom wants rural people to live with dangerous predators protected from management or control. The old man whose only companion is a dog wants to eliminate puppy mills. The person working in what they feel is below them wants to eliminate recreation available only to the rich like trophy hunting. Urban residents want the rural areas to be only for their recreation and not for rural homes or recreation which they don't like. All of these people and more would have understood, up to thirty years ago, that they tolerate others in a free society, just as others tolerate them.

The advent of the "environmental" movement and the "animal rights" movement in the 60's generated laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Animal Welfare Act. These laws defied the Constitution and gave the central or Federal government vast new powers over plants and animals. These powers have been steadily expanded and the Constitutional responsibilities of state governments have withered proportionately. Activist Federal and state administrations and legislatures have expanded Federal powers and permitted massive takings without compensation. States were bought off with promises of Federal money. All those folks who didn't like fur or who yearned for "Pre-Columbian Ecosystems" realized that only through changing America into a socialist form of government could they use the government to force the neighbor to give up their dog or stop fishing or whatever it is that bugs them. They formed national groups (there are dozens of "specialty" animal rights and environmental groups) to pressure state and Federal politicians to pass more laws to ban more things until they are all satisfied. They will never be satisfied. We need only look at Europe.

Guns in nearly every western European country are not allowed to anyone but the rich and powerful. Hunting is likewise banned almost everywhere except for the rich and powerful. Pets are restricted more and more each year. Renewable natural resources like timber and fur are constantly under attack to stop their harvest and use. Fishing is becoming a thing of the past as more restrictions are enacted. As a result of all this, most wildlife is becoming more rare since they have no value because no one uses them. Western European fields and forests are barren and lack biodiversity because there is no concern for what lives there and no money devoted to such things where there is no use. Fake furs are worn by the common folks and polyester fur is replacing abundant bearskin hats for British fighting men while the rich still appreciate and wear the real thing. All of this happened incrementally, just like is happening here today.

Socialist governments pass more restrictive laws and conservative governments don't eliminate those laws. France and Germany are prime examples of this. England is steadily catching up to the restrictions on everything from guns to hunting with the rest of Europe. The green European Community bureaucracy fosters this sameness. Similarly, the UN bureaucracy attempts to foster this sameness internationally. Look north at Canada, a country that parted peacefully from England and kept their form of government. Guns are now registered, spring bear hunting was banned in Ontario with attendant problems. Bear hunting in British Columbia is controversial until people die and rural folks clamor for relief. Like England and most of Western Europe, Canadians are under a long-standing, unopposed party that employs socialist answers to all imagined woes.

Just as Canada is following the socialist mold, so too are their states in the US that are following that path too. The high-tax and historically Democrat-dominated legislature states like New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois and California are the leading examples of states that steadily and unreasonably restrict guns, hunting, trapping, pet ownership, natural resource management and fishing. This, as it is in Europe, is part and parcel of their always needing more tax money and favoring control of everything, just like the monarchy that we threw off on the 4th of July 1776. Unlike the Constitution that granted only specific powers to the Federal government and limited powers to the states and everything else "to the people" many of these politicians want all the power to themselves. All the people with agendas to radically alter our freedoms are more than glad to work with them.

Behind the bald reaches for power by politicians and these people who want to control their fellow citizens, are the "experts" who lie about guns or predators or endangered specie for their own good. Whether it is for the money they get from the expanding government like grants or jobs or whether it is from naivete or simple ignorance, they are a big part of the problem. The government biologist who denies the danger to humans from wolves, bear or cougars is one such. The "expert" who says that you can harvest just as many bears without dogs as with dogs is another. The academic who says, "more study" is needed as massive land use changes are implemented or as property owners are deprived of their property is another. They are like the US Fish and Wildlife Service biologists who oversaw the introduction of Canada geese into American cities 25 years ago and then when a formerly magnificent bird became despised urban vermin what did the biologists do? They did a double arabesque and pirouetted off stage left. The goose problems, from human health to fouling of recreation areas and endangering plane traffic, were left to "whoever."

Traditions in America should remain guaranteed by our Constitution. When the Hitlers or Stalins or Czars wanted to enslave certain groups, they first denied them their traditions. Many of us believe that our traditions from the management of natural resources for the benefit of all to pet ownership and the protection of our logging or ranching business interests are inviolate. The government really doesn't have the authorization under our Constitution to eliminate these things.

There is a slow acceptance of the growth of this socialist model in spite of it being the very thing we rejected when we adopted our Constitution. Each of us, each of our organizations, and our state governments are being bought off with promises of universal health care, more 'humane' treatment of XXX, money for our state or University, grants, exemptions, preference for our group, and on and on. We cannot allow this to continue. We must reject these illegal modifications of our system of governance and reestablish the freedoms and traditions of which we are so justly proud.

The only recourse is activism. We must elect sound state and Federal politicians who back what we stand for and will fight for it. We must vigorously oppose those politicians who would take away our freedoms and defeat them. We must assure judges are appointed who interpret the Constitution and not personal agendas. Politicians and judges are the key to how these changes came about and they are the key to the reforms we must have. To do this we must set aside all our personal agendas that we look for government to answer. It is time to rethink caring for parents instead of looking for homes for them. It is time to make our Church and community groups become a means for all of us to do what we now look for government to answer. If we cannot live together in harmony, we will surely dissolve eventually. We must not give government excessive taxes to constantly use to accumulate more power, hire more bureaucrats, and issue more restrictions. It is a tall order but we face daunting challenges to our traditional ways of life and to the form of government that has allowed us to achieve our potential and raise our families and live our lives as we, not the government, see fit.