PARADOXES AS PREDICTORS

By Jim Beers


The old-timer was flabbergasted. "Did you know the State law protects wild duck eggs while the State law doesn't protect a human child in the womb?" I told him that it was even worse than he thought; all of the States had adopted the federal law perspective regarding the protection of "unhatched" migratory birds. In 1917 the US federal government ratified (by the US Senate) and signed (by the President) a TREATY with Great Britain on behalf of Canada to protect certain migratory birds (mainly ducks, geese, and songbirds but NOT hawks, owls, cormorants, and others) that migrated annually between the US and Canada. The fact that the TREATY would legally protect the eggs of birds named in the TREATY is sensible and understandable, after all a canvasback duck embryo IS a canvasback duck: the fact that 56 years later (Roe v Wade 1973) the same federal government would deny protection to unborn humans as merely having "potentiality" for human life is a scientific and ethical paradox. Is it sensible that an unborn human may be killed (and under the current President with federal funding) while an "unhatched" wild bird is given ALL the legal protection of an adult bird? What does this paradox tell us about our future?
Wolves have been declared to be an Endangered Species despite the danger they present to rural Americans and rural economies. Even though wolves are common and widespread worldwide and that they occurred in several areas of the United States when they were so "Listed" as Endangered; their reintroduction and forced spreading throughout the mountain West has proceeded despite the loss of big game herds, ranch income, pets, and the "domestic Tranquility" or rural residents from retirees to families. How can a federal government formed to "insure domestic Tranquility" by "We the People" force wolves on rural communities unalterably opposed to the presence of wolves? Why haven't State governments been able to prevent the imposition of federal wolves that has served as a legal precedent for so many other federal un-Constitutional power expansions like "taking without compensation" and "taking for something other than 'public use'"? Why are ONLY wolves being "restored" from the imaginary pre-European Ecosystem: why not bison in farm country or rattlesnakes on Long Island? How can such arbitrary and capricious power over American citizens be wielded by politicians or bureaucrats in a "Constitutional" Republic distinguished by a Separation of Powers, States' Rights, and carefully circumscribed authorities, roles, and responsibilities in that Constitution? What does this paradox bode for our future?
The US federal government has been accumulating outright ownership and control (through various instruments from direct acquisition, "swaps", easements and "partnerships" to "Critical Habitat" declarations and key closures of roads and access to private property) of well more than half of rural America. Acquisition and control was begun 100 years ago with the stated purpose (in Congressional funding authorizations) to manage the natural resources on acquired lands for the benefit of all people. Logging, grazing, hunting, fishing, camping, trapping, State authority over plants and animals, local income for roads and schools were but a few of the major promises and intended beneficiaries of everyone involved with this campaign of good intentions that has evolved into a swirl of hidden agendas that are destroying EVERY ONE of the reasons originally used to authorize the unlimited acquisition of private property by government. Wilderness Declarations, Marine Sanctuaries, Roadless Areas, elimination of grazing and range management, prohibition of logging and timber management, destruction of hunting and fishing and fish and wildlife management, disappearance of revenue to local communities and Counties, and the theft State authority by federal bureaucrats are all hallmarks of current federal power expansions. Unbelievably, the "general public has come to accept the un-Constitutional concept that when the federal government gains control of land within a particular state somehow the land is no longer within the state but is magically transformed into some sort of imaginary "federal estate" where federal bureaucrats, powerful interest groups and federal politicians rule like Commissars. How long will this federal expansion continue: until the federal government IS THE ONLY authority? What do these paradoxical precedents mean for our future?
The foregoing examples from the abortion/environment/animal rights agendas are but a few of the current paradoxes (contradictions that express a hidden truth) afflicting America today. Protecting "unhatched" birds while encouraging and paying for the destruction of unborn humans; forcing wolves into rural areas as "necessary" while ignoring the destruction of rural communities and economies that result; and acquiring more and more of rural America with tax dollars to "preserve" rural American values and benefits, and then closing the areas to any management, access, use, and benefit are all paradoxes. They also are precedents for imposition of ever more egregious oppressions by government. These oppressions are increasing in frequency and in severity while they steadily shred the provisions in the Constitution that formerly limited government oppression and protected the rights and freedoms of citizens. Some examples of these concurrent trends are:
- The increasing frequency of the use of Entrapment (the unfair and un-Constitutional luring into crime of an otherwise innocent person) by government agents. If they are guilty of a crime, law enforcement should prove it. If law enforcement merely suspects something, that does not justify tempting them with a crime. Each of us is human and liable to succumb to temptations: government use of this fact should be repugnant to free men everywhere. Law Enforcement agents and their political overseers are not "enforcing laws" when they "Entrap": they are implementing the arbitrary oppression of the powerless by the powerful.
- The current disgraceful actions by National Park Service employees and appointees - all of who are paid for by federal tax money to manage land bought with federal tax money - to prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons on National Parks in States that authorize such carrying of concealed weapons. If federal employees, from National Park Service Park Rangers to the current Attorney General, cannot respect the 2nd Amendment prohibition in our Constitution against infringing the "right to bear Arms", they should quit or be fired and then take their advocacy interests in some private advocacy movement. The use of federal tax money to undercut and strip the US Constitution by those being paid out of tax dollars is equivalent to paying the KGB to murder your own family.
- Spending Billions of tax dollars on recently forming a massive "Homeland Security" super Department to fight terrorism and secure our borders and then within only a few years to convert it into an international magnet for terrorist attacks and a signal that our borders have never been more meaningless. Consider the reaction of international terrorists (Al Qaeda, Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Russia, and a range of foreign and domestic Islamic extremists) to a Homeland Security "Chief" that refuses to use the word "terrorist; that has a record in Arizona of being soft on crime and on illegal aliens; and now orders the end of law enforcement of illegal aliens in the workplace. Further consider her image and demeanor: she has no similarity to Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meier, she is reminiscent of Madeline Albright doing the "Macarena" with a shawl at the UN. She and her "Security" image makes America appear like a 70-year old couple walking on a dangerous and dark city path at 11:00 at night - that is to say a vulnerable crime victim looking to be attacked, brutalized, and then killed. Security intended to protect used as a fishing lure being trolled to be hit by a big fish, it doesn't get more paradoxical than that! If it is not being used to provide "Homeland Security" it should be abolished.
- Using economic stress as a smokescreen to fabricate authority for the federal government to (like Hitler, Stalin, Mugabe, Castro, Chavez, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, et al) take over control of private enterprise. There is NO authority in the Constitution to "Bailout" or "Stimulate" companies, banks, etc.; much less to "set" executive pay, revoke legal contracts, or dictate what vehicles to make or not make. While every example of such "control" of private enterprise has lead to stagnation or collapse, we have allowed Congress and the President to spend Trillions, pass 1000+ page bills that no one reads and to give an appointee (Secretary of the Treasury) powers envied by dictator "wannabees" worldwide. What a paradox; "we will save you by destroying you".
- The best and finest medical system the world has ever seen is slated for destruction. Aside from the nonsense of "economic benefit" from spending Billions to do less of what is now done without federalization: every example of Socialized (and the root of this word is??) Medicine is a disaster. Whether it is the actress that recently died of a ski accident in Canada or it is the Islamic doctors that are ubiquitous in Britain that try to blow up or burn down Scottish airports, there is nothing reasonable to recommend the loss of our medical system. However, the most outrageous Paradox of all in America today is woven all through the sanctimony about the "need" to Socialize American Medical Services. The sanctimonious advocates about the need for unlimited free medicine for the "poor" and illegal aliens et al are currently numerous in the White House, Federal Departments, the US Congress and are the very same ones that paradoxically advocate:
- Unlimited Abortion.
- Human Embryo Destruction.
- Forcing Doctors, Nurses, and Hospitals to Conduct Abortions.
- Evaluating Babies Up to 6-Month Olds for Death If Not Found to be "Worthy".
- Denying Medical Help to the Elderly and Disabled If too Costly.
- Funding Foreign Abortions.
- Euthanasia for the Elderly, Depressed, Disabled, or Inconvenient.
There has arisen a large and active segment of the American population (most accurately described as Socialists) that holds several things in common:
like a disdain for inconvenient human life;
like an unholy reverence for things like ducks and wolves;
like timid foreign policies in the face of mortal threats;
like a yearning for world government;
like a desire for government control of everything from what we eat to where we live or what we can drive;
like contempt for Constitutional protections for things such as gun rights, private property, capitalism, traditions, religious beliefs, speech;
and a deep dislike for Constitutional prohibitions against illegal searches, Bills of Attainder, and Entrapment.
This segment now controls the federal power levers in Washington with the possible and hopeful exception of the US Supreme Court. For at least two years and again hopefully not more than four years, this segment feels unconstrained and the paradoxes mentioned above should serve as both historical examples of a dangerous trend and harbingers of a dark future for America. How successful they will be and whether America can endure what they will do with unfettered control when added to what has now gone before them is something only time will tell. The Constitution is vanishing and citizens are becoming subjects to autocracy: the rest is academic. Unless and until we eliminate this dual paradox (a "Constitution" that is meaningless & a government formed by "We the People" that protects "People" to a lesser degree than wild animals) America will continue to slip beneath the waves of history because we were unwilling to protect it from itself.
Jim Beers