A Letter to the Wall Street Journal by Jim Beers
Harvey Mansfield’s amusing truism, “Sociology and Other ‘Meathead’ Majors”, about how sociology, economics, gender studies, and other humanities have become simply promulgations of debatable values as opposed the “facts” dealt with by “science” is based on one false assumption. It is a false assumption to postulate that modern University “science” deals with “facts”. Modern science incorporates such value-laden pursuits as “Native Species Restoration” and all manner of fictitious rationales to justify closure of public lands, diminishment of rural American life, and the cessation of all management and use of renewable natural resources nationwide.
Take wolves (please) justified as scientifically “necessary” for rural America. Wolves carry over thirty diseases deadly to humans and other animals; wolves roam over vast areas in packs and alone; wolves kill dogs of all kinds; wolves kill livestock such as cattle, sheep, and horses; wolves decimate big game herds and big game hunting, as well as attack and consume humans. Introduced wolves frequent school bus stops, rural yards, campgrounds, rural communities where prey species take refuge, and have stopped rural women from walking dogs and checking rural mailboxes on foot as well as eliminating rural kids’ fishing and camping activities.
All of the foregoing is trumped by University “scientists’” pronouncements in today’s world that wolves “belong” here and that they are “necessary” to “the ecosystem”. Such prattling rationalizations given the patina of “science” are every bit as fatuous and “value”-laden as the most airheaded “gender-studies” professor or sociology study that ever came down the pike.
Jim Beers
31 May 2011
If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.
Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.
Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting at jimbeers7@comcast.net
