Published in The Orlando Sentinel, Tuesday, August 26, 1997 Ecosystem ploy is latest maneuver in fed's land-grab scheme By Charley Reese of The Sentinel Staff A big-shot environmentalist recently posed the question, ''How will we manage large, complex ecosystems?'' Well, unless the American people have become as dumb as an ox, the answer is simple: ''Unless you own the ecosystem, Bub, you ain't managing it at all.'' The most dangerous and insidious assault against the rights of Americans has begun without any public debate or any clear, up-and-down vote. The government has simply assumed the right to control anyone's private property merely by declaring that it has some environmental value. The first steps in this land-grab scheme have been the endangered-species ploy and the wetlands ploy. You and your family could have owned land and paid taxes on it for a hundred years. But now some federal or state bureaucrat can show up and say, ''There's an endangered whatever and your land is its habitat; ergo, you cannot use your land unless you get our permission.'' Or they can say, ''That acreage over there is a wetland, and if you do anything with it without our permission, we will slap you with big fines and even put you in prison.'' This is, to put it bluntly, fascism. In the fascist system, you retain the title and pay the taxes on the property, but the government controls the use. Having gotten away with the endangered-species and wetlands ploys, government is about to make the really big move against people's right to private property -- the ecosystem ploy. An ecosystem can encompass huge amounts of land in several states because the government bureaucrats are the ones who will decide what is and what isn't an ecosystem and whose land is or isn't included in it. Unless Americans raise hell, in the near future those bureaucrats will show up at the door of unsuspecting property owners and say, ''Your land (or you house) is in an ecosystem and you can't do anything to it or with it without our permission. You will, of course, continue to pay taxes on it.'' There are now more than 4,000 armed federal enviro-cops to enforce this nonsense. The right to own and use property is the cornerstone of all human rights. It was considered by the men who founded this country as one of those ''inalienable'' rights, meaning that no government could abridge it without becoming illegitimate and tyrannical. The reason is simple. We are mortals. We have to eat. Therefore we have to engage in economic activity. Only if we can keep what we earn can we ever hope to become economically independent. And if we are not economically independent, at least to the extent of not living at the mercy of government bureaucrats, then all those other rights -- a free press, speech, assembly, etc. -- become meaningless. The key characteristic of a communist dictatorship is the abolition of private property. This is why a minority political group could so easily control a large population. The people work for the government, live in government housing, depend on government permission to buy food. Tick off the government and you lose your job, your housing and your right to buy food. In contrast, our American system is grounded on private property which is why our forefathers at least could say that government is the servant, not the master, of the people. This is a fundamental principle that we should uphold even if the only property we own are our clothes and compact discs. It is not a big-landowners-vs.-environmentalists issue at all. It is a free-society-or-a-fascist-society issue. It is an issue of tyranny vs. the Constitution. We can take care of the environment in a constitutional manner, either by buying land that needs to be preserved or by providing financial incentives to landowners to preserve habitat. Only fools would sell their liberty for a bowl of environmental fascism. [Posted 08/25/97 7:20 p.m. EST] 1997 Orlando Sentinel Online ==================================================================== ///, //// Mark A. Smith \ /, / >. \ /, _/ /. * * * \_ /_/ /. \__/_ < UNITED STATES THEATRE COMMAND /<<< \_\_ http://www.eagleflt.com /,)^>>_._ \ email: msmith01@flash.net (/ \\ /\\\ http://www.flash.net/~msmith01 // ```` ======((`=========================================================== The Second Amendment was created so that the citizens can sleep good at night, and the politicians don't.