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Public Interest Environmental Law

by REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso
Keynote speech at the 21st annual "Public Interest Environmental Law" conference, Eugene, Oregon; March 6, 2003

Good evening, fellow conservationists. I am Jim DiPeso, with Republicans for Environmental Protection … what some may call the world's funniest oxymoron.

I am honored to be sharing the bill with Dr. Vandana Shiva … a woman who is doing so much to protect the old foods and the old traditions from those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. In its small, humble way, that's what REP America is all about too.

It is always a pleasure to be here in Oregon, the good neighbor and friendly rival to my home state of Washington. Oregon is the land of Tom McCall … a great Republican governor who cleaned up the Willamette River and protected Oregon's farmlands and forests from those he called "the grasping wastrels of the land."

We are gathered here just days before the centennial birthday of America's National Wildlife Refuge System. The first national wildlife refuge was established on a mangrove island off Florida by a naturalist, historian, author, birder, and hunter named Theodore Roosevelt, a great Republican president.

In Roosevelt's day, it was the fashion to decorate women's hats with feathers. Egrets, spoonbills, and pelicans were slaughtered for their plumage. Pelican Island was the last rookery for brown pelicans on the East Coast. The plight of the birds was brought to Mr. Roosevelt's attention. He asked his aides, is there any federal law that would prevent me from creating a federal bird sanctuary on Pelican Island? They replied, no, Mr. President. He said, "Very well then, I so declare it."

A few weeks later, in the spring of 1903, Mr. Roosevelt boarded a train for a trip out West … where he ditched the press to go tramping like a boy through Yellowstone … where he hiked in Yosemite with John Muir and woke up atop Glacier Point delighted that their camp was covered with snow … where he demanded that the townspeople in Santa Cruz take those stupid advertising posters off a stately redwood tree and keep California's beauty unmarred by the folly of man.

Well, here we are, a hundred years later. Tom McCall is no longer around to help us fight the grasping wastrels of the land. Theodore Roosevelt is a stone face on Mount Rushmore, a colorful, eccentric figure from the tintype era, a world that has long since vanished. Republicans like them seem to be a vanishing species.

When people think of Republicans today, it seems that all they see and hear are Tom DeLay. Richard Pombo. James Inhofe. And the administration of George W. Bush. Young people observe their doings and can only conclude, understandably, that Republicans have always stood for depleting and destroying to build a spurious sort of prosperity. That is not true and later, I'll tell you why. But hold that thought for a moment.

We at REP are often accused of being RINOS—Republicans In Name Only—by party loyalists who have forgotten their history. We prefer to think that we are the true loyalists fighting to restore a grand old party that has been taken over by ideological body snatchers.

Today, the orthodox Republican version of political correctness, at its most extreme, holds that environmental protection is a plot to repeal individual liberty, close down free enterprise, and send us all back to the caves.

The think-tank ideologues who harbor such notions call themselves conservatives.

They are not conservatives. They are radicals. Their ideology is counterfeit, a changeling which has turned its back on history, debased old traditions, and dismissed old values.

The truth is that conservation IS conservative, rooted in traditional conservative values. Such as:

• Freedom and responsibility
• Thrift
• Patriotism
• And prudence -- the cardinal conservative virtue.
  

These values are our values. These words are our words. We must not allow them to be stolen from us, twisted into weapons, and brandished in our faces. So, walk with me on a tour to rediscover the old values and get re-acquainted with some interesting history.

Ask any American what our nation stands for, and most will say "freedom." We all cherish our nation's freedoms, to speak as we please, worship as we wish, and to chart our own destinies. Yet we exercise our freedom in a context, a public space of culture and geography that gives our choices definition and value. We cannot truly enjoy freedom if that public space is made dirty and dangerous by the irresponsible choices of others. So freedom has a symbiotic partner -- responsibility. We must exercise our freedom responsibly, lest it become license.

Irresponsible actions diminish freedom. A factory that imposes pollution on your lungs is violating your freedom. A government that industrializes the quiet wilderness areas we must have for refuge is violating your freedom. A society that cannot shake its overdependence on petroleum is giving up its freedom.

Speaking of petroleum … let's talk about old-fashioned thrift. Years ago, Republican leaders were the champions of frugality, efficiency, and balanced budgets. Today, you hear some self-proclaimed conservatives say with a straight faces that deficits don't matter. Those of you under 30 know that deficits do matter, because you will get the bills for my generation's spendthrift ways.

During World War II, we understood the value of scrimping, saving, recycling, and squeezing a penny until it howled for mercy. As a boy, I remember my grandfather, who was a retired grocer in Los Angeles. He showed me the "A" coupons you had to have to buy gasoline during the war. Three gallons a week. That was all you got. We had to be thrifty because our nation's survival was at stake.

We are in a different time with different needs. But the issue is still survival. We all have to be thrifty, because there are 6 billion of us and more on the way clamoring for food, water, energy, materials and elbow room. Our old Earth only has so much to give.

Yet today, we have a vice president who sneers about conservation, as if using resources efficiently is somehow unpatriotic.

So let's touch on that that word "patriotism." Some of you may feel uncomfortable with that word, as it may connote for you images of jingoism and intolerance for dissenting points of view. I can understand that.

But remember the connection between patriotism and the land. America was shaped by the wilderness experience of our forebears. Who could visit Crater Lake, Yosemite, or the Everglades and not feel proud that those who came before us had the wisdom to protect them? Like the Statue of Liberty and Independence Hall, these great places are symbols of our nation.

And, how could anyone not realize that taking good care of the land that sustains us is the highest form of patriotism? Love of country impels us to stewardship. Theodore Roosevelt said it himself in 1910: "Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of ensuring the safety and continuance of the nation." Yes, Theodore Roosevelt said that conservation is a patriotic duty. What do you say to that, Mr. Vice President?

Finally, before we take our history tour, let's get re-acquainted with the cardinal conservative virtue. Prudence. Now there's a word that's been up in our cultural attic for a long time collecting dust.

Edmund Burke, the 18th century British statesman and a leading light of traditional conservative philosophy, ranked prudence as "the first of all virtues." As Burke said, changes must be made only with great care after very sober consideration of the possible consequences, lest we let our heritage run down the drain.

Prudence demands that any tinkering and tampering with complex ecosystems that provide vital life support services be done only with great deliberation and care.

With our growing numbers and powerful technology, we have the power to do great harm to the intricate matrix of biogeochemical cycles that moderate temperatures, cleanse water, generate topsoil, recycle nutrients, pollinate crops, and produce food for all.

Yet we are merrily carrying on with our tinkering and tampering with little thought to long-range consequences.

It is not prudent and certainly not conservative to mine and pollute aquifers faster than nature can replenish them.

It is not conservative to waste water, energy or any other resource.

It is not conservative to erode topsoil and destroy coral reefs.

It is not conservative to clear-cut old-growth forests and replace them with weeds.

It is not conservative to push creatures into extinction like a slow-motion asteroid strike.

It is not conservative to spread novel, persistent poisons that may interfere with the most fundamental processes of life at the molecular level.

It is not conservative to conduct an uncontrolled science experiment on the only atmosphere we have.

Not prudent, as the elder George Bush used to say.

Or, as Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1909: "Conservation of our resources is the fundamental question before this nation, and that our first and greatest task is to set our house in order and begin to live within our means."

Good old TR. As dominant a figure as TR was, however, the history of Republican conservation achievements did not start with him. Go all the way back to the greatest Republican, Abraham Lincoln. He found time in the Civil War to deed Yosemite Valley to the state of California for protection as a public park.

In a report about Yosemite commissioned by the California Legislature, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted wrote that wilderness promotes human health and provides a necessary refuge from the tiresome grind of city living. Wilderness is not just for the privileged and the powerful, it's for everybody. As Olmsted said, governments have a duty to reserve a wilderness commons as an inheritance for a free people.

In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established in a law passed by a Republican Congress and signed by Republican President Grant.

In the 1890s, New York City business interests fought for a state constitutional amendment to declare the Adirondacks forest to be "forever wild." They knew that the wild Adirondacks forest was a source of pure, fresh water that would keep the wheels of New York commerce turning. If only we could bring some of those businessmen back to life, so they could have a stern talk with those who want to tear down our last roadless forests.

Those early achievements were the fruit of a dawning awareness that our country's wasteful habits were depleting our country's natural bounty.

(Slide)

See that bird on the left? That's a passenger pigeon. In the first half of the 19th century, passenger pigeons filled the East's skies by the billions. Their overfights darkened the sky at noon. So many passenger pigeons roosted in trees that the branches would break.

Yet in 1914, the last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha. They were driven to extinction by wasteful market hunting and by elimination of the hardwood forests they thrived in.

The story was the same for the thundering herds of bison that crisscrossed the Great Plains. And for the vast schools of silvery fat salmon that amazed Lewis & Clark on their Voyage of Discovery.

The prevailing philosophy of the time was that wild nature was an obstacle to be conquered and a treasure trove to be exploited. The continent seemed endless. We logged the great north woods, plowed the vast plains, pulled mineral riches out of the mountains, laid rails, built cities, and stoked factories.

But perceptive minds saw the cloud in the silver lining. Through the insights of Thoreau, Muir and other philosophers, authors, poets, and painters, the cultural tectonic plates slowly began shifting toward a view that wild nature was good, in and of itself, and ought to be saved. A popular conservation movement emerged to protect the beauty of America's lands and conserve our wildlife.

Theodore Roosevelt came of age during this cultural tumult. Let's spend some time with him. He was a complex, flawed, contradictory, yet powerfully visionary man who hard-wired conservation into our nation's architecture.

As a youth, he loved collecting specimens and was fascinated with wild creatures. At Harvard, he studied natural history. After his first wife and his mother both died on the same day, Valentine's Day in 1884, he left New York for the healing peace of the Dakota Badlands. It was there, through his hunting trips and observations, through the loss of his cattle during the terrible Winter of the Blue Snow that he began to understand the consequences of demanding more from the land than it can give.

When he returned home from the Badlands, he rose in politics, founded the Boone & Crockett Club to promote conservation, served one term as governor of New York, then was elected vice president in 1900.

In September 1901, he was hiking in his beloved Adirondacks, enjoying the forests, mountains, and sparkling lakes. A messenger arrived with terrible news about the deteriorating condition of President McKinley, who had been shot days before by a deranged anarchist. At 2:15 in the morning, while TR was rushing down a mountain to catch a train, McKinley died. Theodore Roosevelt, appropriately enough, became president of the United States in the wilderness.

During his eight years in office, he created a conservation legacy that future generations, including our own, still cherish.

Through the Antiquities Act, Roosevelt established 18 national monuments, including lands that later were protected in Grand Canyon, Olympic, and Lassen Volcanic national parks.

Five national parks were created on his watch, including Crater Lake, here in Oregon.

After Pelican Island, he established more than 50 additional wildlife refuges.

And, he set aside 130 million acres of national forests. In 1908, he declared that the only thing wrong with the forest conservation movement was that it hadn't gone far enough.

Was Roosevelt a conservationist like Gifford Pinchot or a preservationist like John Muir? He was both. He believed forests, range, and water should be used, but used efficiently. But he also believed that land and wildlife should be protected for their own sake.

During his Western tour a hundred years ago, he saw the Grand Canyon for the first time. He marveled at the spectacle and was overwhelmed by its scale. He turned to face his countrymen at the canyon's rim, a large crowd, excited that the president had come so far to see them.

Then he asked them, implored them, to think beyond themselves, discover the generosity of spirit that only humility can bring, and to leave a lasting gift for people they would never see: "Leave it as it is. You cannot improve upon it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. Keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you."

That, my friends, was a patriot, defending his homeland.

Was Roosevelt a progressive or a conservative? He was both. Conservation was one of the tools he used to prevent the excesses of unfettered capitalism from destroying our democracy.

For TR, conservation was protection and extension of democracy. That was his greatest insight. We have no right, he wrote in 1916, to waste the heritage of unborn generations and deny them the freedom to choose their own destiny. As Abraham Lincoln extended democracy's mandate over African Americans through emancipation, Theodore Roosevelt extended democracy's mandate over future Americans through conservation.

TR's work laid a foundation that his successors, Republicans and Democrats, built on. Let's pause briefly with two of them.

(Slide)

Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Hardly the first names anyone today remembers when we think about the history of conservation.

Calvin Coolidge was probably the most conservative president in the 20th century, in both his personal demeanor and his political leanings. They called him Silent Cal, and we remember him, when we think of him at all, as a man of spare habits and few words. But he had a wicked, deadpan sense of humor.

There was the time he was at a dinner party. There were two women seated close to him and one of them said, "Mr. President, we have made a wager. Our wager is that we can get more than two words out of you." Coolidge leaned over and said, very carefully: "You lose."

Calvin Coolidge loved and appreciated wildlife. He had a pet raccoon named Rebecca that he would take for walks around the White House.

But we conservationists should also remember that Calvin Coolidge used the Antiquities Act to set aside Glacier Bay National Monument, which covered 1.4 million acres. That was the largest monument in the nation's history until the Carter years. He also protected Craters of the Moon in Idaho and Lava Beds in California.

Coolidge was succeeded by Herbert Hoover. The man who will be forever remembered for his ineffectual response to the Great Depression. But let's give the Great Engineer a break. He was a man of great achievement. During World War I, he organized the distribution of food to millions of destitute Europeans, one of the great humanitarian achievements of the 20th century.

Like TR, he had a lifelong interest in nature and conservation, but he approached the issue from a different perspective. He supported the expansion of outdoor recreation as a check against the moral decline he feared would result from rising materialism and affluence.

He did not share Roosevelt's enthusiasm for federal action to further conservation. In the last year of his term, however, Hoover used the Antiquities Act to establish many national monuments, much as Bill Clinton did nearly 70 years later. What are now parts of Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Arches and Saguaro national parks were first protected as monuments by Hoover.

Today, there are Republicans who would weaken or even repeal the Antiquities Act, one of the most powerful conservation tools at our command.

(Slide)

Now, take a look at this fellow. Doesn't he look like a conservative Republican? Dark suit, horn-rimmed glasses, he looks like he's about to jump out of this photograph and cut your budget.

He was Congressman John P. Saylor, who hailed from the blast furnaces and hardwood forests of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Saylor was a Republican who served in Congress from 1949 until his death in 1973. His colleagues in Congress called him Mr. Conservation. People like us simply called him Saint John.

One day, he was hiking through what is now Petrified Forest National Park in eastern Arizona. He spotted a tourist picking up a piece of petrified wood and pocketing it for a souvenir. Saylor was a big man. He had a loud voice. He liked to use it too. He strode over to the tourist and shouted at him: "Put that back, it's mine." What do you mean, yours, the man replied defiantly. Saylor lowered his voice, then explained that if everyone took a piece of our common inheritance for their own gain, soon there would be none left. The chastened visitor put the rock back and who knows, it may still be there in the desert where he left it.

John P. Saylor was the prime co-sponsor of the 1964 Wilderness Act. He was one of the most relentless, dogged advocates of wilderness who ever walked the halls of Congress.

He even fought his Pennsylvania colleagues, unsuccessfully, over a dam on the Allegheny River that he said would destroy the river's beauty and violate a treaty with the Seneca Indians.

Saylor's beliefs in wilderness preservation were grounded in old-fashioned, conservative values. In a remarkable speech he delivered on the floor of Congress in 1956, he talked about challenging and toughening ourselves in the crucible of rugged nature, without machines or luxuries. He spoke of the wilderness cure for jaded minds and tense nerves.

At the deepest level, he spoke of wilderness as the essential compass that would hold us true to our bearings. To "keep from getting blinded in our great human success to the fact that we are part of the life of this planet and we would do well to keep our perspectives and keep in touch with some of the basic facts of life."

Can anyone here imagine Rush Limbaugh or Tom DeLay articulating such profound thoughts? No, neither can I. I ask you, who was the true conservative?

There were others in that era. President Eisenhower and his Interior Secretary, Fred Seaton, protected what is now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. At REP America, we have a rule. You are not allowed to call the Arctic refuge "ANWR." "ANWR" is a sterile acronym that sucks the life out of a big, wild fecund land of bears, caribou, moose, wolves, foxes, musk oxen, and more birds and flowering plants than you can shake a stick at. We call that land what it is -- the Arctic refuge.

Barry Goldwater loved the Grand Canyon. He even said once, that if he ever took a mistress, it would be the Grand Canyon. I know, he voted for the Glen Canyon Dam. But later in life, he said something we seldom hear from politicians. He said he was wrong. He said we shouldn't have built that dam.

John Chafee of Rhode Island. Name a big, wild landscape and chances are, Senator Chafee fought to protect it. It was Chafee's patient persuasion that rounded up enough Republican votes to block obstructive tactics and allow the California Desert Protection Act to become law nearly nine years ago.

(Slide)

OK, we can't talk about Republicans and conservation without giving this man his due. Richard M. Nixon.

If the truth be told, Nixon probably wasn't much of a conservationist. The issue just didn't occupy his thoughts all that often. But Richard Nixon, for all his failings, faults, and strange behavior, was a canny politician.

Just before his swearing-in in 1969, Nixon was at a pre-inaugural dinner. As luck would have it, Russell Train was seated next to Nixon at the dinner. If you'll recall, Train later became EPA's second administrator. Train got Nixon's undivided attention when he proposed that the new administration focus on environmental protection as a way to unite a divided nation.

The time was right for it. We knew we were fouling our nest. Nine days after Nixon took office, the infamous Santa Barbara oil spill fouled one of the most spectacular coastlines in the world. Five months later, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire from all the flammable toxins that had been dumped into it.

In 1970, Nixon proposed a 37-point environmental platform to clean up our air and water, get a handle on waste, and protect the nation's remaining wildlands. Much of his program was enacted and we have made enormous progress as a result.

The foundation of his program was the National Environmental Policy Act -- which embodies that cardinal conservative value of prudence. NEPA doesn't demand specific outcomes. It simply tells the government to look before it leaps, consider alternatives, and tell the public the truth. For some of our leaders today, even that is too much to ask.

So, what's gone wrong? Why has the Republican Party of Theodore Roosevelt become the party of Doolittle and DeLay?

It all started two decades ago, with the appointment of James Watt as Interior Secretary. Watt personified the rise of hard-line, anti-government ideologues who view environmental protection as an oppressive pillar of the big government, welfare state. Following Watt's lead was Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America.

Today, these ideologues are largely in control of the Republican Party's intellectual apparatus. Their think tanks are the mill churning out the Bush administration's environmental policies.

Somewhere along the way, environmental protection became identified with the politics of the left, which alienated more conservative conservationists.

The environment became an overly partisan, polarizing political football. Democratic partisans want the issue all to themselves. And Republican partisans play into their hands by dismissing legitimate environmental concerns, or by trying to cover their tracks with clever, misleading language: "Healthy Forests" or "Clear Skies."

Mostly, however, I think the problem has been big money from special interests. You know who I mean -- the crony capitalists who talk about getting the government off our backs, while writing checks to politicians, rigging the game in their favor, and plunging their snouts into the government trough.

Special interest money has inundated our political system and threatens to drown it.

(Slide)

Which brings us to this man, right here. President Bush has been caricatured as a knucklehead. He is not. He is a street-smart, calculating politician who runs a tight ship. He is determined to remake the politics of this country. His people fight hard and they don't take prisoners.

The Bush administration is far more sophisticated than the clownish Watt or the brazen Gingrich ever were. Bush administration initiatives could undo a generation, perhaps a century of environmental progress.

An energy policy that would perpetuate entangling alliances with despots who oppress their citizens and rob them blind.

A passive, do-nothing global warming policy that leaves the hard choices and the risks to future generations.

Oil drilling in the Arctic refuge, the Rocky Mountain front, and other heritage lands.

New rules that would eliminate protection for so-called "isolated" wetlands.

A new rule that opens our finest national parks and wilderness areas to an onslaught of roads to nowhere, noisy dirt bikes, and all-terrain vehicles.

There are days when we feel overwhelmed. Why do we stay in the Republican Praty? How can our band of mavericks hope to stop the juggernaut?

We stay because we know we're not alone. The conservation gene pool in the Republican Party is down, but not out.

(Slide)

The man on the left is Congressman Sherwood Boehlert of New York. In the House, he's the go-to guy for green Republicans. If you want to find Republican allies in the House for a conservation bill, he's the one you need to see.

Time after time, Sherwood Boehlert sticks his neck out and defies his party's leaders. His reason is simple. As he told the Washington Post a few years ago, if he wasn't an environmentalist, his constituents would find someone else to represent them.

Nancy Johnson is helping us protect the Arctic refuge. Chris Shays is fighting snowmobiles in Yellowstone and the dumping of mine waste in Appalachian streams. There are others.

We have friends in the Senate too. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Lincoln Chafee, who has kept his father's legacy alive in Rhode Island.

And there is Arizona's John McCain, who sits in Barry Goldwater's old seat. He forms bipartisan alliances, votes against Arctic drilling, introduces serious global warming legislation, and annoys the hell out of the White House. God bless him.

We need to support these people. We cannot afford to have the environment be forever thought of as a partisan issue. It's too important. Like political conservation biologists, we must protect the environmental gene pool in the Republican Party and nurture it toward recovery.

Someday, the worm will turn, the public will tire of extremists, and we'll need Republican friends when the cycle changes in our favor.

So, where do we go from here? First, we need to realize that time is a luxury we don't have. We are charging up a storm on the planet's ecological credit card. Within the lifetime of the youngest people in this room, maybe sooner, a balloon payment is coming due.

Second, we must untangle the environment from the ideological knots in which it has been twisted. To be sure, protecting the environment has both conservative and progressive roots. But first and foremost, the environment is a matter of practical household management. If you have a leak in the roof, you go up and fix it -- you don't try to convince the rest of the family that the puddle building up on the living room floor isn't really there.

Third, we must help people understand science -- what science is telling us, but more importantly, how science really works. Citizens need the tools to critically evaluate the he-said, she-said stories that often pass for environmental reporting in the media.

Fourth, we must learn to talk with middle America -- most of whom don't live and breathe environmental issues and have never heard of this conference.

Most people spend five minutes out of their week thinking about politics. Not just environmental politics. All politics. Five minutes. You are competing with other worthy causes and you have little time to make it case. Every word counts.

Be compelling, but don't be gloomy. People want hope. They want solutions. But they don't want extremism.

We need to be clear in our advocacy. Acknowledge that we use nature's bounty. The lights in this room, the chairs you are seated in, ultimately came from something that was grown or mined. That's reality. What we are seeking are methods of growing and mining that minimize waste, avoid pollution, and don't violate the land's integrity.

From the political left, we need a greater willingness to consider market-based solutions. Let me be clear. The market is not an infallible deity beyond human influence. But markets are useful tools that can spur innovation and creativity at reduced cost, if we understand their limits and enforce safeguards against abuse.

From the political right, we need a greater willingness to consider property in a broader context. The right to use and enjoy property must be protected. But property rights do not exist in a vacuum and never have. We all have neighbors who deserve consideration. And we all depend on the natural commons for our sustenance.

For the entire political spectrum, it means an end to false dichotomies. No more economy vs. environment talk. It's not either-or. It's both-and. Up in my state, conservationists, businesses, a Republican congresswoman and a Democratic senator are pushing a creative business deal that would save 150 square miles of forests from being swallowed by urban sprawl. We need more such initiatives.

Understand the centrality that religion has in the lives of millions of citizens. Tap into that power by respectfully broadening and deepening alliances with the faithful. Remember that TV ad campaign, "What Would Jesus Drive?" It was brilliant. There is power in their message about old values and old ethics.

Understand the pride that Americans have in this country. They respect our nation's symbols. Help them see that we should treat our public lands commonwealth with the same respect and reverence we give our shrines and statues. Celebrate those place names. Roll them off your tongue. Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The Green Mountain National Forest. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Which brings me to my final piece of advice. People's love of country gives us an opening to get off the defensive and reclaim the language that connects with middle America.

Don't ever let our adversaries portray us as "radical." We are not radical. Radicals do radical things, like spend down our inheritance, consume wastefully, pollute other people's property, and leave their bills for others to pay. Conservatives do conservative things, like embrace humility, respect old traditions, act with care, take precautions, keep large margins, and make haste slowly.

Don't ever let our adversaries portray us as "unpatriotic." We are not. We are patriots because we are protecting the land that protects us and our families. We are part of the land -- our blood, bones, and sinew come from the soil, plants, animals, and waters of our nation and the world at large. Our culture and character are embedded in the land. America is an idea, but the land gives the American idea context, shape and substance. The land gives the American idea a home.

We believe it is our ethical responsibility to take good care of the land and pass it on, healthy and vibrant, to the next generation of patriots.

I'll leave you with a quote from a famous conservative named Margaret Thatcher. None of us has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life tenancy with a full repairing lease.

I have talked enough. Go forth, hike your trails, raft your rivers, conserve energy, remember to laugh and do good work. Thank you.