Utah legislators' letter offends American freedom

The Salt Lake Tribune features an article about a letter that a couple of Utah legislators wrote associating wilderness designation in the state with aiding terrorists. Letter links wilderness, threats of terror. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance takes the brunt of these bumbling assaults on preserving wild places, wilderness that when properly protected actualizes the most potent and important manifestations of genuine public freedom remaining – the wild.

“Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”

– Aldo Leopold 1949 A Sand County Almanac

8 thoughts on “Utah legislators' letter offends American freedom

  1. Some years ago, I took part in what became a seminal defense against national efforts to establish legal and land use precedents designed to undercut the ’64 Wilderness Act. During that effort, one of my colleagues in that effort went to the county courthouse to protest a set of proposed ordinances that were designed to sideline us and was confronted/cornered on the courthouse steps by a group of women who warned her that God had given the earth to mankind to be used and to be used up, at which time Christ would return to renew it. They warned us that, by seeking to preserve the earth, we were delaying the Second Coming and were, therefore, aiding Satan. I guess that “aiding terrorists” is the latest version of aiding Satan.

  2. You know, I’m as conservative as they come, maybe even a nut to many of you, but I don’t understand opposition to wilderness. It makes sense to preserve many areas that remain wild so that people can use and enjoy them in their original state. You can hunt, fish, hike, run around naked, anything you want in designated wilderness areas. There are few places where the average peson can be so free.

  3. monte,

    i don’t get it either. it’d seem to be a pretty apolitical proposition. unfortunately, i think that the political system is infected with something that ought worry folk anywhere along the ideological spectrum …

    take this for example

    this system is breaking/broken…

  4. Holy crap–people are nuts! Do political organizations really buy the fact that people will believe this association with terrorists? It does go along with the premise that it seems the GOP extremists who pander to big business and big oil are propagating and prolonging the “war” to further their own interests. Absolutely and insanely SICK! If you’re from Utah vote these guys out as fast as possible. You can’t trust an idiot!

  5. From the “terrorist nuts”, one would have to conclude that 500 years ago this country was full of terrorists because it was mostly “wilderness”.

    You can’t argue with “mythology & irrationality”. A short story illustrates my point: A World War 2 veteren who was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed by Japan told me that “Japan bombed Pearl Harbor by mistake, thinking it was California”. I thought I could logic to convince this “fool” that a country (Japan) that was capable of building airplanes & ships that required precise mathamatical tolerance limits of one hundred on an inch could not have been 3000 miles off in their navagation. His reply was: ” I was there & you were not”.

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