| When you ask these
"do-gooders" why they don't specify the harmful plants and animals
they think need some massive Federal program, they smile and do not answer.
The reason is that "they" all "know" this is about Federal
power over all plants and animals to be controlled by the "usual
suspects" named above. It is about their future grants and future
bureaucratic growth and power growth and land acquisition and land control and
people control and reelections and doing away with ranching and hunting and
fishing and public land access and farming and pets and private property and
State authority, etc., etc.
If you think this is hyperbole, you haven't
watched the evolution of The Endangered Species Act or The Marine Mammal
Protection Act or The Wilderness Act. Had I described the current status of
these Acts just twenty years ago, I would have been committed to an asylum and
laughed out of the room, yet here we are. Federal INVASIVE SPECIES authority
will make those Acts seem like child's play.
While the Endangered Species Act goes
unauthorized for decades, and marine mammals ravage commercial ocean resources
and themselves, and "Wilderness" becomes a "front" for
Wildlands corridors; "invasive species threaten biodiversity". A
patently absurd statement becomes the basis for a massive change in American
legal authority and a justification for an equally monumental Federal program
that is neither achievable nor desirable.
Is it any wonder that we sit still for wolf
introductions? Is it any wonder that we accept psychobabble about bears or
mountain lions killing and maiming men, women and children on urban paths and
backyards as tolerable because "we are in their habitat" or someone
"behaved wrong" or even that "they never do that"? Like
old Adolph initially blaming the Jews for Germany's defeat in WWI or Russian
Communists portraying the death of innocent royal children as necessary, once
you accept such initial assumptions - you will accept anything!
We are accepting more and more nonsense all
of the time. The loss of cattle (or sheep or horses or whatever) to wolves
means the cattle shouldn't be "there". The loss of elk and deer
hunting to wolves means there should be no more such hunting. The loss of your
pet to wolves means you should keep your pet indoors. The presence of wolves
by a winter school bus stop means you  should close the bus stop. An attack of
wolves by your ranch proves you shouldn't live there. The presence of an
Invasive Species (i.e. "Non-Native Species") "threatens"
the "Biodiversity" (i.e. the Species mix that elites say should be
"there").
Many "invasive" species (think
honeybees) are as beneficial as the most beneficial "native" species
(think corn). Similarly, many "invasive" species are as harmful
(think killer bees) as the most harmful "native" species (think
brown recluse spiders or poison ivy). The ecosystem is what it is. It
constantly changes (where are the dinosaurs or saber-tooth tigers?) sometimes
for the better and sometimes for the worse. Imaginary ideals of bygone
ecosystems in  significantly different times are just that, imaginary.
Right-thinking Americans that value their successful society and their
freedoms know better than to sell this down the road for pernicious agendas
that dare not speak their name.
So what is it: invasive or harmful,
biodiversity or native? The first step in an honest dialogue is honest terms.
You can't make up your mind based on babble. I for one, opt for letting State
governments continue to control and eradicate harmful species while
cultivating and fostering beneficial species. Let the Federal government
concern itself with embargoing harmful species that would otherwise enter the
individual states. Until we clean up our terminology and have an honest
debate, there is no reason to modify the best governmental system the world
has ever seen. 
Jim Beers
16 August 2005
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