by Dick Mac
The laws most despised by libertarians, "conservatives" and tea party supporters seem to be not laws that created social justice reforms in the 20th Century. They seem to most despise laws and agencies connected to the environment. The Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency are derided as examples of big government.
If the tea party movement ever gets any real power in Congress, you can say good-bye to those laws and agencies. No longer will the Blue Whale, Giant Panda, Snow Leopard, Green Sea Turtle, Goliath Frog, Lear's Macaw, Rothschild Giraffe, or Giant Otter get in the way of industry and the expansion of industry; because the regulation of industry, they tell us, kills jobs and overly burdens the citizenry.
As I like to say about tea party philosophy: "If Jesus and the Founding Fathers didn't put it in the Constitution, then it's Unconstitutional."
The long-suffering tea party supporters rely on Eighteenth Century imagery and socio-economic theories to define the future. They like to dress-up like Colonial Era citizens, wax poetically about the virtues of men who are known to have been slave-owners, and wave flags from times long past. It's all sort of quaint, until you realize these people are a front for the corporate rape of our nation, our land, our government, and our infrastructure.
Now comes the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake.
You think you don't know much about it, but you may have seen more pictures of this snake than any other. It is a snake whose image is burned into the memory of Americans.
It is the snake on the "Don't Tread On Me" flag.
The Center for Biological Diversity reports that its number are diminishing fast and only three percent (3%) of its natural habitat remains.
This has happened in America before. By 1967, we had hunted and encroached upon the American Bald Eagle to such a degree that it was threatened with extinction.
Imagine if a symbol of our nation was made extinct by our own hand.
We saved the American Bald Eagle! We showed the world that we were modern, thinking people with a plan to make the world a better place. We showed that we could stop for a moment, put our heads together, pool our resources and change the destructive course we are traveling.
In 1973, with the American Bald Eagle facing extinction, we passed the Endangered Species Act. Forty-three states have passed the Act. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service established the Endangered Species Program and we saved our bald eagle from extinction.
This federal agency, this Act of Congress, and this program were established to ensure that all of the things that make America great are cared for, not just its markets and industry. These are the things that make us a civilization, that separate us from the other animals, and place us ahead of other nations.
The people who fund the tea parties would abolish all three: the Act, the agency, and the program, and libertarians would claim victory against big government.
Before they get to do this however, we need that agency the tea party supporters hate so much to do something for us: we need them to save the snake that the tea party supporters like to put on flags and wave around.
That's right. We need the agency they hate so much to save their symbol.
And we can do it.
And we will.
Because we are America, and we are bigger than the tea party and its supporters, we are bigger than any other nation on the planet, we are a bigger people with bigger plans and a bigger future than anyone else, and we will save this rattlesnake from extinction, because of all those reasons and one more: it is the right thing to do. A big people with a big country and a big government do big things; like save the favorite symbol of those who would destroy us.
Report: Tea Party's Favorite Snake Needs Government Aid
Report from Center for Biological Diversity: As One Snake Is Saved, Scientists Identify Another Needing Protection
Scientific American: Endangered Species Status Sought for "Don't Tread on Me" Rattlesnakes
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