Some shout at the environmentalists, “Why waste time saving trees when people starve and nations are crumbling?”
I say the same cause for the crumbling of nations and starvation of their people is the cause of the eradication and abuse of our wild neighbors.
An underlying ignorance is woven throughout our American culture.
It is our worst attributes in excess.
I read recently about how Theodore Roosevelt stood in the face of his father’s friends and some of his own family to set aside millions of acres for preservation, never to be touched by the axe again. He was a man whose fortune was tied directly to the exploitive practices of the pioneers and yet he knew better and did better.
I found myself in awe. I felt like I was reading about a foreign hero. But no, this was an American president. His motto for conservation was, “I so declare it.” He did so because he knew it was right.
The act of doing what is right in America is endangered.
Edward Abbey once stated that, “The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.”
Men who pray together lay together. Their relationship is full of the means to justify a Heavenly end. This sometimes leaves little room for earthly needs.
Roosevelt, despite denominational affiliation, was not a religious man. In fact, he detested the religious bigotry which held the nation’s government in its grip during his life. He appointed men from catholic, Jewish, and Protestant beliefs out of the belief that anyone can have upright morality and integrity despite religious affiliation.
Religion is not evil. It is not, alone, the cause for all that is wrong with our country. It is the weapon at the hands of men who would rather advance themselves over their neighbors. It is the justification for their calloused actions.
Our Protestant nation defined success as financial excess and equated Godliness with success. Christianity is a religion built around a homeless carpenter who instructed his disciples to tend to the sick and lost with these instructions:
“You received without paying; give without pay. Acquire no gold nor silver nor copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics nor sandals nor a staff, for the laborer deserves his food. And whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it and stay there until you depart. As you enter the house, greet it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.(Matthew 10: 5-14)”
As with the case of every religion, there are Christians who choose to exaggerate the words of god to fit their personal will.
The Puritans, pioneers, and conservatives in American history used religion as the means to justify the eradication of our wilderness. This same method was applied to civil rights, poverty, economy, and defense legislation.
As long as our political foundation is the “prevention of change” to religious morals, based upon the exaggeration of religious commandments, America will not prosper.
Edward Abbey once stated, defiantly and with much criticism, that, “A patriot must always be ready to defend its country against its government.”
Some may take that as a call for rebellion. I take it as a call for perspective. The days of the general public having like-minded representatives in our state and national capitals are gone with the Roosevelts, Kennedys, and even Nixons. For decades we have read the newspaper and disagreed with the actions rolling down on us from capitol hills.
We read ideologies and believed yet ignored the facts.
Each representative is corruptively obligated to their own interests to the point where ours has no bearing. We simply have no effect on our government.
Thomas Jefferson once stated that, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
At the very least our representatives should fear the loss of their jobs in the case of public displeasure with their performance.
Roosevelt stood in place, behind a podium of unpopularity among his peers and after three like-minded presidents before him were assassinated for their revolutionary ideas. He did so with the support of his countrymen, those who put him in that position. He proclaimed, “I so declare it!” He did so without the fear of any man, besides his late father. A father who instilled in him the tenacity necessary to carry out what is right for its sake, and sometimes its sake alone. He did so. And his image is one of strength, wisdom, and foresight without religious affiliation and with political ambiguity.
It is understandable that present and future leaders will call upon the ghosts of our past heroes to link themselves to greatness. We must not be confused. The greatest of Americans were acknowledged as such during, as well as after, their lives.
I know this not from personal experience. In the nearly three decades of my life, our country has not provided a single example of such a hero.
I have never been more grateful to be a student of history as I am now.
Anthony Sadler 