Get any good conservationist into a discussion on the subject of the Army Corps of Engineers, or the Department of Highways, and he will curse the incredible waste and corruption involved in the massive “federal giveaways” to lumbering, mining, grazing, hydroelectric and construction interests, and then curse them doubly again because he as a taxpayer has been forced not only to suffer from the results of these criminal actions, but actually to finance his own suffering.
If you really want to see some fireworks, however, take this same conservationist and ask him if his principles of good government and good economics apply to such projects as national parks and wilderness preservation programs. Ask him why it is, that, if justice requires motorists to pay for their own roads, hydroelectric firms to pay for their own dams, golfers to pay for their own golf courses, and gourmets to pay for their own escargots, lovers of the wilderness should not pay for their own wilderness, and campers for their own campsites? Why should the special interests of conservationists be subsidized by the taxes of non-conservationists?
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