Posted on 10/10/2013 2:26:49 PM PDT by xzins
“We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around.”
—Ronald Reagan
The conduct of the National Park Service over the last week might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration. This is an expansive claim, of course. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS, the NSA, the HHS mandate—this is an administration that has not lacked for appalling abuses of power. And we still have three years to go.
Even so, consider the actions of the National Park Service since the government shutdown began. People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was “closed.” Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he’s not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to “close” the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than “keeping it open.”
The closure of the World War II Memorial was just the start of the Park Service’s partisan assault on the citizenry. There’s a cute little historic site just outside of the capital in McLean, Virginia, called the Claude Moore Colonial Farm. They do historical reenactments, and once upon a time the National Park Service helped run the place. But in 1980, the NPS cut the farm out of its budget. A group of private citizens set up an endowment to take care of the farm’s expenses. Ever since, the site has operated independently through a combination of private donations and volunteer workers.
The Park Service told Claude Moore Colonial Farm to shut down.
The farm’s administrators appealed this directive—they explained that the Park Service doesn’t actually do anything for the historic site. The folks at the NPS were unmoved. And so, last week, the National Park Service found the scratch to send officers to the park to forcibly remove both volunteer workers and visitors.
Think about that for a minute. The Park Service, which is supposed to serve the public by administering parks, is now in the business of forcing parks they don’t administer to close. As Homer Simpson famously asked, did we lose a war?
We’re not done yet. The parking lot at Mount Vernon was closed by the NPS, too, even though the Park Service does not own Mount Vernon; it just controls access to the parking lots from the George Washington Parkway. At the Vietnam Memorial—which is just a wall you walk past—the NPS called in police to block access. But the pièce de résistance occurred in South Dakota. The Park Service wasn’t content just to close Mount Rushmore. No, they went the extra mile and put out orange cones to block the little scenic overlook areas on the roads near Mount Rushmore. You know, just to make sure no taxpayers could catch a glimpse of it.
It’s one thing for politicians to play shutdown theater. It’s another thing entirely for a civil bureaucracy entrusted with the privilege of caring for our national heritage to wage war against the citizenry on behalf of a political party.
This is how deep the politicization of Barack Obama’s administration goes. The Park Service falls under the Department of the Interior, and its director is a political appointee. Historically, the directorship has been nonpartisan and the service has functioned as a civil, not a political, unit. Before the current director, Jonathan Jarvis, was nominated by President Obama, he’d spent 30 years as a civil servant. But he has taken to his political duties with all the fervor of a third-tier hack from the DNC, marrying the disinterested contempt of a meter maid with the zeal of an ambitious party apparatchik.
It’s worth recalling that the Park Service has always been deeply ambivalent about the public which they’re charged with serving. In a 2005 Weekly Standard piece about the NPS’s plan to reconfigure the National Mall, Andrew Ferguson reported:
The Park Service’s ultimate desire was made public, indiscreetly, by John Parsons, associate regional park director for the mall. In 2000 Parsons told the Washington Post he hoped that eventually all unauthorized traffic, whether by foot or private car, would be moved off the mall. Visitors could park in distant satellite lots and be bused to nodal points, where they would be watered and fed, allowed to tour a monument, and then reboard a bus and head for another monument. “Just like at Disneyland,” Parsons told the Post. “Nobody drives through Disneyland. They’re not allowed. And we’ve got the better theme park.”
Yes, yes. They must protect America’s treasures from the ugly Americans. No surprise then that one park ranger explained to the Washington Times last week, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can.”
“To make life as difficult for people as we can”—that would be an apt motto for the Obama worldview. And now even the misanthropes at the National Park Service have been yoked to his project. This is the clearest example yet of how the president understands the relationship between his government and the citizenry.
since no one knows where he's from, that's hard to say
I get it; people are angry. But how does making silly threats on the internet to shoot government workers get anything accomplished?
Folks need to remember how they voted or failed to vote and never put, or by lack of action allow, another administration like this in office.
I hear you, I’m not pleased about any of it either.
But the hyperbole and threats just makes FReepers look bad and quite reactionary to relatively benign events that are doing more to turn the public opinion against the government and the regime than we could’ve hoped.
Agreed. They are and will be much more important hills to die on, metaphorically speaking.
Bttt.
Are you trying to get FR shut down - posting crap like that.
Most of which are supported by funds from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses.
BTTT
This is what Megan actually said. She didn't say "we" should go shoot anyone. She said states should take back their own land and resources.
In a sense, if you think about it, the nation taking property in individual states is an encapsulation of the philosophy of an almighty central government.
It really is just marginally different than the Fed seizing property in Canada, another free state. And we fought one Civil War already with that as one of the issues. Slavery, of course, was a gross violation of the God-given freedom of a human being, and that had nothing to do with a State's power of self-determination while within a representative system that specifically protects the real identity and authority of individual States.
Do I think you are right that violent rhetoric injures Free Republic? Yes, I do. But, the words she wrote seems to me to be about States seizing back their own authority and boundaries through the actions of that State's legitimate authorities.
Your idea sounds nice but we already have seen what local ownership often has wrought. Many states run their profitable parks into the ground and rob them of revenue to fund other programs. The unprofitable parks and historic sites often crumble into oblivion from neglect. Several National Parks and historic sites were at one time adminstered by states who practically begged the Federal government to take them over.
The NPS isn’t my favorite agency but in all fairness, they do a far better job of taking care of these parks than almost any state government would do.
Just curious, do you also condemn people who think that a 3% sales tax on commodities is justification for violently overthrowing a sovereign government? Surely you would because that’s a miniscule sufferance compared to having armed police threatening military veterans and Members of Congress who visit public war memorials.
Well while the trail has been "guerrilla opened" since at least the 4th, a nearby visitor center, The Happy Days visitor center, was closed and Barrycaded.
I just went out for a ride through the various county roads that surround the park and on my way back I noticed that the Happy Days Center was opened and holding an event for Time Warner. This in the face of NPS goons having closed numerous private establishments simply because they sit on park lands or use park lands for access roadways or vehicular parking.
I took numerous pictures with my cell phone and was wondering if there is any organized effort to push back on this issue and would those pics help in highlighting this regime`s bold faced bull shit approach?
“In a sense, if you think about it, the nation taking property in individual states is an encapsulation of the philosophy of an almighty central government.”
Um you do realize that most regular National Park property was bought or donated right ???
I want to see the NPS & the U S Marshals go in & kick out Obama & Biden-—
\They are both living inside Federal properties-—and the Federal government provides them with every whim they wish.
Thank you.
Many states run their profitable parks into the ground and rob them of revenue to fund other programs. “””
Ar3e you seriously suggesting that the Feds don’t have those actions down to a fine art???
Do you think Obama's bully boys are going to look at the "nuance" around "I want them fired on" when they show up at the server farm?
I don't. That comment and all alluding it should be pulled.
Posting rules are clear. No violence.
...to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;
These are the only legitimate constitutional ownings of the Federal Government that I can find. I see no authority for it to own half of Alaska, for example.
I want them fired on is not the full statement she made. She said that work was to be done by those in the quote above that actually preserves what she said.
She was NOT advocating us shooting park rangers. Her words can be misrepresented all night long, but that doesn't make the misrepresentation correct. It isn't.
She was advocating state authorities, SHERIFFS, STATE POLICE, AND NATIONAL GUARD, taking back their own land. It was clear. It wasn't even a close call. Suggesting she wrote otherwise isn't dealing with the actual words on the page.
I am saying that the Federal government generally does a better job than states or municipalities at running and maintaining their parks and historic sites. I have been to hundreds if not thousands of them across the country in 50 years and I’ll stand by that statement.
Are they perfect ?? Heck no, far from it. Just better than the alternative.
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