Love of Country

BushCo has written a truly shocking new set of regulations for forest management:

Replacing rules written by the Reagan administration to govern national forest plans, the Bush administration has adopted sweeping new regulations that relax protections for wildlife and eliminate a requirement for the public to weigh in on mining, logging and other activities.

The new rules...undo an obligation at the heart of the battles over Pacific Northwest old-growth forests and spotted owls: that federal managers "maintain viable populations" of wild animals in national forests.

Is that explicit enough for you? It is legal under this plan to annihilate wild animal populations, and public input will not be sought.

This, mind you, is the "Homeland." This is the sacred soil for which we must kill and die...presumably to prevent anyone from usurping our right to turn it into a poisonous wasteland. We are instructed to love this country above all others, and yet to be indifferent to - or to rejoice in - the fact that we're selling it off piecemeal to the highest bidder. We're told that it's the greatest country on earth, a nation specially and formally blessed by God Himself, and yet we're not supposed to imagine that it's worthy of special notice or special protection so long as there's a buck to be made.

It's as though we were to love our family members not for themselves, but because of the money we can make harvesting their organs.