Opinions, musings, ideas, pearls of wisdom
What Holiday Is In This Month, and Who Cares?
Opinion by Kent Hull
What Holiday Is In This Month, and Who Cares?
Opinion by Kent Hull
The holiday this month is INDEPENDENCE DAY. Independence Day is celebrated on July 4th, the date when most of the signatures that would appear on the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE had been affixed. Repeat after me:
We celebrate Independence Day, the date of the Declaration of Independence, on July 4th.
We celebrate Independence Day, the date of the Declaration of Independence, on July 4th.
We celebrate Independence Day, the date of the Declaration of Independence, on July 4th.
Despite what everyone's careless and sloppy thinking habits says, the holiday is not the FourthOfJuly. (The fourth of July is my next younger sister's birthday. We never sang, "Happy fourthofJuly to you, Happy ...")
I believe that calling Independence Day the FourthOfJuly demeans those courageous men who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to declare the beginning of a new nation, a new kind of nation, and the first nation to be formed this way. Calling the holiday the FourthOfJuly also demonstrates how much we Americans have cheapened our heritage, even forgot most of it, and now are losing it.
Why should we care? One of the things our nascent nation declared independence against was the common European (and above all, English) tradition that all fish and game not held by the aristocracy as part of their lands granted by the sovereign (King) belonged to the sovereign. The penalty for taking an animal or fish that belonged to the King was severe, putting out of an eye, other maiming or death. Although the issue is not addressed in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States of America formulated eleven years later, within the first hundred years or so of our nation's history, legislation and federal court decisions established what is often called, "The Doctrine of Public Trust." Initially, the doctrine held that all fish and game was the property of the citizens, not of any State, and no land owner could claim ownership of fish and game on his property.
Over the next hundred plus years, as the notion that our land and water resources were limitless fueled our expansion, common destructive practices and government neglect or venal policies led to severe depletion of wildlife including fish and game, wanton destruction of what should have been renewable resources, and wholesale pollution of waters and destruction of watersheds. In part led by President Teddy Roosevelt, the notion of the public trust grew in perception and law to hold that all public resources (government land) belonged to the citizens and was held in trust by the governing agencies (BLM, USFS, etc.) to be managed for the benefit of the citizens.
No more. Over the last six years, especially, we have seen policy governing public resources (both land and water) change from management for the long range benefit of the public to encouragement of destructive use for profit by powerful and politically connected individuals and corporations. The judiciary won't stop it: it's largely aligned with the current party in power. The fourth estate (news media) won't raise a hue and cry: with few exceptions, it is owned by a small number of powerful economic interests also aligned with the party in power. The congress won't act, because it, too is dominated by the party in power. Whose fault is it? Yours and mine. With the same lazy and complacent thinking that calls Independence Day the FourthOfJuly, and our heritage so degraded that most citizens don't know that Independence Day celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence and even don't know what the Bill of Rights is, we let our free press be bought right out from under us, the citizens, by a few media giants, elected the present administration and legislature, and complained no more at the pernicious provisions of the Patriot Act than the enabling legislation for the War On Drugs, or even the equally bad Alien and Sedition Act almost two centuries ago.
So why should we be more attentive to our heritage? Because inattention is causing destruction of trout, steelhead, salmon and striped bass fisheries in California. Inattention has led to laws that may restrict our ability to protest or change policy that we find noxious. Inattention has allowed most of the protections we had against abuses of economic power by those who have amassed it, in things such as natural gas and propane prices, software costs and lack of competitiveness in that industry; and devaluation of our national reputation and currency which makes travel to foreign places with great fishing much more expensive and often much less welcoming.
The lazy and complacent thinking that makes the FourthOfJuly a hot dog, barbecue and fireworks day is costing us our fishing, the value of our savings and pay (or pension), and many of the rights and privileges we thought were guaranteed by the courageous acts and foresight of the founding fathers of our country.