Published in Free Range Report: "President Obama’s consideration of designating the 1.9 million acre Bears Ears National Monument begs the follow-up question: “If the President can unilaterally designate this Monument, despite opposition from every level of government, local, State, and federal, what can’t the President do?” It is not so much a matter of doing the right thing or the wrong thing as it is about having authority to do the thing at all. From whence cometh this presumed authority? Certainly not from the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. These documents, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederacy, were a practical and well organized set of internal controls designed specifically to guard against unrestrained power. So while we argue the pros and cons of a monument, we lose the much more important discussion dealing with those controls." Read more:
Comments written in defense of Commissioner Phil Lyman whose article was printed in The Free Range Report:
By Carl Kimmerle: "The founding fathers created a government with three separate branches of government in order to create checks and balances. We were supposed to have an elected legislator to create laws and an elected executive to enforce the laws, then a jury of our peers when facing a trial. It no longer works that way! We have BLM and Forrest service agencies that usurped ownership of 92% of our land. They do not have a single elected official. They create laws like a king, and enforce them the same. when we are accused of breaking their make believe laws we are hauled to federal court far away from our homes and given a trial by crooked judges and a jury not of our peers but foreigners. In such a trial evidence is not presented but hidden….and then people like you say good riddance and throw more of us in jail. It was people like you that hailed tyrants like Hitler, cheered as they arrested political dissidents and allowed the destruction of freedom and goodness.
A German Pastor, Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) wrote about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power which seems relevant to you and your philosophies:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” Carl Kimmerle Sept. 2, 2016
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My response: Carl, I’ve thought often of that very quote by Martin Niemoller as this battle over land has evolved. Those who weren’t concerned at first, because it didn’t directly touch their lives, didn’t get involved. I have to admit, I was that way when the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument was deceitfully designated, without any thought to lives, economy, freedoms, or land rights. I didn’t live there, nor did I know anyone who did. But then I met two people who grew up there, with families who had multi-generations of investment in the land. They shared their stories with me and I started to realize the aftermath of such Executive decisions.
I learned that presidents often use the Antiquities Act for “pseudo” support in such designations, and do so because of pressure from wealthy environmental lobbies. One of these is Conservation Lands Foundation headquartered in Durango, Colorado. This is how they see the Niemoller’s truism playing out in state after state: 1. The “Monument Men” come with promises “that all is well; you won’t be affected." 2. then they destroy logging businesses (mining, oil, coal, etc.) 3. Then they reduce the AUMs for cattle. 4. then they decimated small local businesses (which happened in Garfield county) 5. This in turn affects school enrollment, and families are driven away from the rural life style they and their ancestors loved and worked for all their lives. Like Hitler, the CLF has a vision of what life should be; but unlike Germany’s despot who tried to create the “perfect race,” the CLF's perfect world is devoid of people — except in large cities, of course, which would be the ultimate punishment for most of us who love rural Utah. Rural space for the CLF is only for recreation, not for livelihood.
