Guest blog by Jim Beers

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” George Santayana

The papers, the evening news and even the President’s Press Conference are full of it. “It” is the fact that the “Lame Duck” Congress has just passed more legislation than any such Congress “since the 1960’s”.

So we are all told to be ecstatic that a Congress made up of many members bitter about having been beaten out of office in a party primary or by voters in the general election (my what an ungrateful bunch we voters are) has given us radical social change (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal), bigger government, and our promise to a dubious ally not to ever again (per a Ratified Treaty) deploy any more or any improved missile defense systems. Actually, aside from being “more legislation since the 1960’s; this “witches’ brew” resembles the 1960’s in many other ways.

The social turbulence of the 1960’s spawned a Democrat Congress and White House that enacted similar dubious excesses that (like the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk) have grown to hideous excesses from the 1970’s down to today. For instance:

– Government classification and preference based on sex and “race” were instituted and spawned (along with other “new laws”) a US Forest Service that no longer managed forests, a US Fish and Wildlife Service that no longer managed fish and wildlife, a Bureau of Land Management that no longer managed land or forage and universities that no longer teach or condone the proactive management or use of renewable resources. That they (government favoritism based on political preferences) will ever end is belied by the current preferences for women in college even as they are overwhelming majorities in the Universities, the endless calls for more minority coaches for professional teams that have “minority” participation of 9 or 10 to one, and the likes of Al Sharpton having the unchallenged audacity to publicly call for government censoring speech and speakers that he finds “insensitive”.

– Interest group-clamoring for government sanction of the lie that humans-in-the-womb are not human while prosecuting humans that “take” protected bird eggs (ducks, geese, eagles, etc.) as a “taking” of that
species of protected bird. This gave us Roe v. Wade and the current euthanasia laws and the proposed “Death Panels” that are denied or lauded depending on whom you ask.

– Federal laws to “protect” everything from Endangered Species, Marine Mammals, Wetlands, “Wilderness”, and “Roadless” Areas to sand flies brought us the most destructive 40 years in American history. Private property, rural safety, rural economies, public land benefits, liberty, freedom, local governments, state government Constitutional authority, animal ownership, animal use, affordable energy, and other things too numerous to mention are greatly diminished due to fatuous do-gooder claims based on “science” that is no more than Middle Ages’ alchemy.

– Universities have been steered in the direction of abundant grants and funds clearly intended to “prove” certain assertions (or “no more grants for you”). State agencies have likewise been co-opted to tolerate and support (both openly and surreptitiously) federal abominations like the coerced establishment of wolves and grizzly bears, deadly predators) in the midst of 21st century rural communities: this has resulted in the bizarre situation wherein state employees are paid by state governments but in fact work for federal agencies and international agendas. Local governments are similarly greatly diminished in scope and authority as more and more of the United States is purchased or eased by federal agencies that destroy the tax base and ignore state and local government even as federal politicians cater more and more to foreign powers with dubious motives.

These are but a few of the continuing “accomplishments” of the now-vaunted “1960’s Congress”.

It is no personal wish but an historical parallel when I say that this current activist Congress and President, like the 1960’s President (Johnson) and the very liberal Democrat Congress of the (late) 1960’s that likewise catered to a very liberal and turbulent public, will not be viewed so rosily through the glasses of time and the lessons of history. “Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell”, “Start”, budget-buster spending, tax rate deferrals, clandestine ratification of more radical political appointees, redefining of the Constitutional words establishing Federal authority from “Navigable Waters of the United States” to mean “All Waters of the United States”, prohibiting the harvest and use of shark fins, and other things as yet undiscovered in the thousands of pages of tyrannical fodder recently passed – all of these will lead to “intended consequences” that will be denied until they occur.

Just like those Roe v. Wade supporters who simply laughed when told abortion would lead to government euthanasia or those Endangered Species fanatics that would chuckle and sneer when told the ESA would lead to wolves forced on rural America or that abundant Polar Bears and global-warming fantasies would one day be the basis for the federal government to simply proclaim hegemony over hundreds of thousands of square miles of one state (Alaska) thus making that area part of the federal estate without paying a
dime or without even firing a shot: the emerging real impacts of this activist bunch of “Lame Ducks” will be mistakenly seen by the next generation as a current phenomenon rather than an intended and radical
historical outcome engineered 40 years earlier.

Like an ominous dark cloud creeping over a prairie horizon on a warm afternoon, all the hoopla about “how much this Congress accomplished” should not only cause those with prairie experience to think about where they could take shelter, it should send chills down the collective spines of all those that have lived there long enough to know what destruction might suddenly arrive and what devastation might be left behind. That such a storm could be man made is incredible.

Jim Beers
23 December 2010

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

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