TR and 'wise-use'

Jerry Bowyer encounters EarthFirsters (and their incumbant event-documentation efforts) while trying to enjoy Teddy Roosevelt:
"We knew the TR Memorial would not be a memorial for the next hour or so, but a stage, on which young people (bored by the specific flora and fauna around them) would congratulate themselves, before the cameras, for their love of 'the earth'. So we left, sadly, the sound of speeches, zeal and sanctimony trailed us into the woods for a hundred yards or so, until it was swallowed by the forest.
I wished that they had actually stopped for a moment to read the memorial, especially the part where TR admonishes us that, "Conservation means development as much as it does protection." That's probably the thing that mob needed most (even more than "Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.") Maybe if they came to understand that Teddy was not an early version of themselves; that the founders of their movement fought him, they might have a moment of self-doubt about whether the earth really should be put first. Teddy certainly didn't think so. He thought people came first."



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