So Bush wants oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

There is a place in our world that is so remote that men don’t go there often, if ever. Here in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, animals flourish and have a space that holds both danger and rewards: they get to just be animals.

There is another world in which we live, one that owes its cirumstance to the events that led us to this point. We have conquered the land and made it our servant. Our machines split the smallest form of matter... until we find a smaller particle. What to do now with the quarks!?

We wrest the destiny of genetics away from the unseen hand of our creation, our God. Small value is placed on chance and circumstance.

Our country places its needs above those of entire continents with impunity and gleeful arrogance. There are no more wild places. At least not in the sense that our interaction with them can no longer be independent from them. The evolution into the species homosapi un-kind has brought us more false security. We strut about, believing that the mastery of our environment is perpetual and no longer a thing which must be thought through and worked for.

American political thinking is self-serving instead of a solemn duty to serve a greater purpose that ones self. Our great nation was founded by men and women who believed that there was a purpose to the struggle and that all was lost but they must go on in spite of it.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1780

This sounds just like something that Bush would say today. The difference is that John Adams left the United States Presidency with a newly established National University System and a Federal highway and rail system.
His actions bore out his rhetorical commitment to America and the generations to come.


As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

This however does not sound like Bush...

The American president does not appear to appreciate the value of oil just there, sitting in the ground. His view is one of getting it out now. After all, the terrorists might blow us up with a "nucular" bomb. Then all that oil would go unused.
Horror!

He would rather have US continue down the same path of over-consumption that we are currently on.
People who are living in America for the most part don’t care about birds or caribou or the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. Polar bears are mean; there are no penguins on the tundra, and well, puffins just don't have the same appeal. We don’t need the wilderness. We have Wal-Mart and extra value days. We have giant cars and a space program (almost) a giant GDP (we still do right?) and most of all we have a Republican MAJORITY!
That must be what Bush thinks about Americans.

So why does it matter to a “few” pleading liberal environmentalists?
Isn’t the Jackson trial way more important?

I guess so.

I suppose it is for them. The problem I have is that America was not about the tyranny of a majority or of a sovereign king but a balance of representation and a respect of the diversity that is inevitable in so vast a nation.
I have seen polls that show a majority of Americans actually oppose drilling in ANWAR. But Bush doesn't need to rely on reality. Why when he can manufacture it?

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

It was remarked yesterday that a numerous representation was necessary to obtain the confidence of the people. This is not generally true. The confidence of the people will easily be gained by a good administration. This is the true touchstone.
Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June, 1788

So even though Mr. Bush would want to drill for oil, others who the land rightly belongs to, do not. It is his duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution. It is the citizenry who must be heard. Even those who are seemingly in the minority. Their will must bear some weight on the scales. The Republicans must not be allowed to sneak this in through the budget process... But they will find a way.

It is a shame to see that so many people have never been alone in the wild, far from comfort. Being so alone is humbling and changes perspective. Maybe we could just leave this one place be. Will the fishes and birds be able to escape the smoke and trash and oil wells?

Maybe we could just find a way to use less.

Perhaps we could look a little closer at the path we are on.

We’ll see.