The Toads Take Overby Tibor R. Machan
The Toads Take Over
by Tibor R. Machan
Being a citizen of this nation, I take it that
the national forests are
as much mine as anyone else's. So then, imagine how I feel now
that the
one nearest my home, Cleveland National Forest, has been shut
down from
April to September, all on account of some toad that some people
want
to have protected. I can't even take a visiting friend from Europe
there to show them the place.
I don't know who did it - perhaps the Bureau of Land Management,
given
that it is a national park, or some other federal or local arm
of the
will of some of the people who seem to be favored to get their
way for
some reason. But it makes no sense at all.
To begin with, it isn't the
environmentalists's forest but mine and yours and everyone's,
supposedly - taxes go to pay for it, which come from us all. Then,
also, why would one trample on a bunch of toads - most of us usually
avoid trampling on anything, even the smallest living thing, so
long as
we can see it, unless it is hazardous or a pest.
But there is the much bigger issue of why toads are supposed to
be so
important as to trump anyone's access to the forest which our
taxes
are, in part, keeping intact? Who are these supposedly high and
mighty
people who have the gall to order the rest of us to sacrifice
some of
our goals for theirs, namely, to save the toads they happen to
love?
None of these questions is answered convincingly by the folks
who think
that it is OK to shut down the forest on behalf of the toads.
So,
therefore, let them get together and buy a forest and then they
will
have the right to keep everyone out. But so long as this is supposed
to
be my forest, what they are doing is playing little tyrants, running
roughshod over me and thousands of others who not only pay for,
and
have the right to make use of, the forest but were not warned
about its
being closed, so arrived to find a gate prohibiting their entry.
Environmental imperialism is no more benign than
any other!
Also, let's not kid ourselves that democracy settles the issue
- after
all, before the environmental frenzy took off, those who championed
it
didn't simply accept democracy, which at the time favored some
other
policy than theirs.
In any case, this is supposed to be a free country not for toads
and
their environmentalist champions but for people. It is citizens
who
have the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And
if my
idea of happiness is to ignore forests and its toads, that is
just what
my fellow citizens will have to learn to live with. I am not there
to
use as they see fit, not even for the sake of preserving an endangered
toad.
It is about time that folks make it clear whose life is more important,
that of a toad or that of a human being. That idea that all animals
are
equal is nonsense, anyway, considering that no one can convince
a toad
not to hang out in places where it is endangered and all the toad
and
other environmental saviors make their appeal not to other animals
but
to human beings. The difference hits us in the face at every turn,
so
it is sheer obstinacy - or an out and out ruse in support of some
special interest that is once again parading as the public interest
-
to pretend that the toad's lot is more important than ours.
Now if it is a matter of the toad being good for us all, let us
discover that and make the proper moves in light of that discovery.
We
are not in need of environmental nannies who stand guard over
our
lives. We are adults - and adults shall be neither masters nor
servants
to one another, even when the stakes are high. And everyone thinks
the
stakes he or she picks are very high - whether it is historical
buildings in need of restoration, Indian burial grounds to be
protected
from builders, wet lands to be shielded from developers, our souls
to
be saved from pornography, and so forth.
It would be far better if we left it to individual citizens and
their
freely organized groups to make a determination of what is important
and have them, not apprentice dictators, order their lives accordingly.
That way a variety of worthy objectives would be pursued by a
variety
of citizens and citizen groups, instead of some being given special
ranking by dint of public policy that conscripts the rest of us
to
abandon our goals in favor of these special benighted ones. 
-----------------------------------------
Tibor R. Machan is Distinguished Fellow and Freedom Communications
Professor of Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Leatherby
Center for Entrepreneurship & Business Ethics, Chapman University,
CA.
He is also research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University,
and advisor to
Freedom Communications, Inc., a media company in Irvine, CA.
His most recent books are Ayn Rand (Peter Lang,1999) and
Initiative-Human Agency and Society (Hoover Institution Press,
2000).
[To read more of Machan's stuff, go to: http://www.zolatimes.com/writers/Machan.html.]