Posted on 09/24/2009 6:44:56 PM PDT by nickcarraway
SNIP
In other words, the entire origin of the national park system, whose most passionate backer was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, is based on a firm belief in -- Glenn Beck, cover your ears, please -- government intervention to regulate an out-of-control free-enterprise system. In fact, one of the more dramatic moments in Burns' documentary involves the battle to create a park in the Great Smoky Mountains, while logging companies bankrolled anti-park ads and were "frantically cutting the old-growth forests to extract everything they could before the land was closed to them."
In some ways, Burns' new series sounds like almost as radical a critique of free market excess as Michael Moore's new "Capitalism: A Love Story." Of course, it's unlikely to cause as much of an uproar as "Capitalism" because Moore is a natural magnet for controversy while Burns' films, with their lilting music and cozy slo-mo zooms, can make the most incendiary historical events appear almost as soothing as a glass of warm milk.
However, Poniewozik has uncovered the razor blade inside Burns' cinematic pillow. To hear him tell it, Burns' portrait of the creation of our national parks should give conservatives pause in their rush to pillory government at every turn. As Poniewozik writes: "The national parks -- and 'The National Parks' -- are based on ideas that are classically, if not radically, communitarian: That the free market doesn't always act in the public interest. That it's good that every American shares ownership of and responsibility for the most exclusive properties in the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
The Washington-Jefferson National Forest already existed and could have been turned into a park, but Virginia/FDR decided to expropriate land and build a road to nowhere. You've got to actually get into the mountains for the WAsh/Jeff Forest, so maybe FDR's advisors told him he needed something closer to DC.
New York Republicans are the original RINOs. Teddy Roosevelt was a socialist, a racist, an imperialist, and a Big-Government nanny-stater par excellence.
I couldn’t agree with you more......
HELLO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s because Ken Burns IS a “Friend of Dorothy.” You will see him with his partner at any function.
He sees everything through the prism of Civil Rights. Always has.
Burns is on the government payroll. The subjects of his films will never be anything more than window dressing for his “government is good, more government is better” narrative.
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