Consider that over a span of 50 years or so, the FLEAs have succeeded in creating a new class of people: the Welfare Class. Whereas years ago it was a disgrace to be on welfare, in today’s liberalized arena being on welfare has in too many cases become a way of life. This class was needed by the FLEAs as an additional voting base that could be controlled and counted on to always vote for a Far Left Extreme Activist. This class has, over the years, not only become accustomed to not producing, but now demands payment for not producing.

Now I am starting to see an emerging FLEA campaign to create a new and different class of welfare: the Welfare State. I believe the FLEAs are trying to make each state dependent on the feds for the funds to maintain certain programs, eventually leading to total dependence on the FLEA feds. Voila—you have the Welfare State. Some programs that come to mind where this plot has already started are education, law enforcement, parks, senior citizen programs, roads and highways, pollution control and many, many more. Consider the threats in years past to reduce or withhold highway funding if states did not or would not reduce air pollution or wanted to remove the 55 mph federal speed limit.

The plan to develop a Welfare State Class is really quite ingenious since it is virtually impossible for a fiscal conservative to argue against it. Consider the following points:

1. The states do not have to raise taxes to run the program, thereby creating "bragging rights" for administrators about how great their administration is and how they have "held the line" on spending.

2. If anything goes wrong in the program they can always say, "It’s a federal program and we have no control over it."

3. It’s virtually free from any conservative criticism, since all the FLEAs have to do is say to any state that balks, "Fine, you run the program then—without any help from us!" Imagine the outcry from the public, then, when the program starts to falter!

This seduction of individual states is no different than that first "hit" of a drug which leads to the second and the third and, well, we all know the end result. How long will it take to "hook" every state? I honestly don’t know. But, I know it took the FLEAs over 30 years to develop a welfare class large enough to change public opinion regarding welfare recipients. Soon it won’t be a very big step to just plain America rather than the United States Of America. (Just think of all the job and business opportunities for that one—stationary, official seals, coins, bills, etc.)

So, the next time you hear one of your elected officials brag about how they brought the pork home, stop and think about what price we may be paying!

Ronald K. Delabarre
Boulder City

Millions of ordinary Americans are deeply concerned about our environmental future, and with good reason. Human-induced species extinction means a great deal more when we realize that among the thousands of species never to return are thousands of varieties of food strains. Since the last century, better than 80 percent of our pear and apple varieties have gone the way of the platypus. Food is basic to life. When we mindlessly select species survival based on what is convenient for packing, shipping and profit we make a grave error. When we allow corporate giants like Monsanto to create a seed whose second generation is sterile in order to create higher profits and hold farmers hostage to a patented life form we threaten our very survival. Human beings are an integral part of creation, but we are not its crown though we behave as such. Ayn Rand’s blind worship of the captains of industry never took into consideration how frightfully effective they were in destroying natural capital as their demand for ever-higher profits grew.

Rand’s main point about the environmental movement was made quite explicit by David Graber, a biologist with the U.S. National Park Service, who declared: "We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, or free-flowing river, or ecosystem to man-kind. They have intrinsic value ...."

This "intrinsic value" cultism is indeed, as you put it, lunatic. Conceptually, it means man must value nature not for any benefit to man, but as something superior to man. Hence, nature must be kept pristine despite any harm resulting to humans. We must halt activities beneficial to us, such as farming, forestry or cancer treatment in order to prostrate ourselves before the intrinsic value of fish, trees, birds and rats.

"Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature," writes biologist Graber, "some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." CUNY philosophy Prof. Paul Taylor adds: "...ending of the human epoch on Earth would most likely be greeted with a hearty ‘Good riddance.’"

While extreme, these anti-human sentiments are logically pure expressions of environmentalism’s core "intrinsic value" doctrine: Because man, like every other life form survives through the conquest of elements of nature, man is an inherent threat to the "intrinsic value" of nature and must therefore be eliminated.