Tradition

TRADITION

I only heard him speak twice: once last summer and once the year before. He was a cheerful man who loved life and his family. He spoke with great wisdom and eloquence as he helped an old and unassuming man reach out to some of the loneliest and most forsaken among us. He died recently in an accident and his young family and so many of us will miss him very much.

Last summer he said something that I found particularly thought-provoking and which I have shared with many of the thoughtful men and women I have spoken with since then. What he said was that as men grow old they should be able to keep their wits and their health as long as possible if they do two things. Those two things are: 1. pursue activities that they believe have transcendental value, and 2. engage in activities that they enjoyed as boys.

What sound advice. For any of us; the practice of doing things we believe have transcendental value and enjoying those things that we enjoyed when we were young seems so simple and so true. Transcendental means superior, extraordinary, idealistic, lofty: it means something to be proud of and that each of us would recognize as virtuous or as going beyond the admonitions of the Ten Commandments and actually helping others as much as we can regardless of who they are. If a man growing old can enjoy benefit from pursuing activities that he believes have transcendental value: why shouldn’t everyone?

It is the second thing that he mentioned that I would like to explore and enlarge upon here. Consider that if men growing old derive mental and physical health benefits from engaging in activities that they enjoyed as boys: wouldn’t women do the same? If we can live long and “transcendental” lives by pursuing activities we enjoyed when we were young: what if those activities were no longer allowed?

When we think of transcendental activities; things like volunteering at church or at a food kitchen come to mind. Then there is public activism for what we know to be the public good and the good of our children and grandchildren. There is the sharing of knowledge and experience with the young and the defense of worthwhile freedoms and rights that are cyclically endangered by various forces. Paradoxically, those things that we feel the greatest “transcendental” value from are those things that are the most urgent or those that are believed to be the most hopeless.

Activities we enjoyed when young could be things like reading or hiking or simply chatting with friends. Often, in the case of boys (like me), it involves shooting and hunting and trapping and fishing and wandering around wood and dale. It also involves meals composed of things I shot or caught or picked; like the mallard I ate for dinner last night. It also involves watching westerns (Stagecoach and Shane come to mind) where good guys make things right and bad actions are punished and a great nation based on a strong communities and families emerges just like more recent westerns such as Open Range. It involves reading historical accounts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and accounts of battles that made this country free. It involves tales about soldiers and cowboys and sailors and trapper/explorers that went forward to death and glory while building the best, imperfect though it may be, society this world has yet seen. It involves passing on stories of my father in WWII and my grandfather during Prohibition to my grandson. It also involves learning more about the exploits of the hunters that cleared the plains for farms and the ranchers that cleared the mountains of wolves and grizzly bears along with the outlaws so that rural life and rural communities and American states could be possible. It involves learning more about how fisheries can be restored, and how waterfowl hunting can be maintained, and what is the best size shot for mallards over water in December or for snow geese in fields in January. These are the sorts of things I loved as a boy and truly the sort of things I love today.

In the movie Fiddler on the Roof, the father sings a song that is titled Tradition. This song tries to show the importance of “tradition” to a community and to families. The subsequent loss of “tradition” for the Russian Jew in the movie and play is a clear warning to the audience that a fearful end is near. Despite the warnings of “friends” and the sympathy of neighbors, the family and community is swept away as their “traditions” and then they disappear. It is like that with rural Americans today.

As the “New Millennium” dawns on America, we see a nation beset by a one-sided War on Tradition. It may be painted as a Red/Blue War on voting records but truly it is what the Red/Blue split is about: a growing urban movement utilizing urban political power to make rural America into a caricature of what they believe the areas outside the urban/suburban areas should be. Rural America, like Poland before World War II or Cambodia before the Vietnam War, has no designs on urban America. Rural America has no interest in remaking the cities into anything other than what the citizens of those cities want to make of themselves. Rural America is not campaigning to arm city residents for protection against criminals nor are they directing political power to take away property or force city residents to tolerate deadly animals in their midst. Rural Americans look to historic protections in the Constitution to preserve their own community’s governance and the rights of individuals to pursue their lives as they and their parents and grandparents have for decades. In other words, rural Americans only want to preserve and enjoy their “traditions”.

Alliances of mostly urban groups, on the other hand, are numerous and committed to the purpose of destroying the traditions of rural Americans by utilizing the unleashed power of an unchecked and all-powerful central government. These movements, both singly and in various compacts and alliances, generate Billions of dollars and citizen sympathy from large groups of the citizenry that are ignorant of and unaffected by the harms and destruction they are wreaking on rural America.

A cross-section of these groups would reveal:
- Literally hundreds of “animal rights” groups from PETA and HSUS to Greenpeace and ALF.
- Hundreds of “environmental” groups from the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society to uncounted spontaneous groups opposing particular dams or roads or energy development.
- Sub rosa compacts of lawyers profiting from the litigation and lobbying for such groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity et al.
- Gun control combines of lawyers, activists, lobbyists, etc.
- Anti-traditional rights groups disguised as “conservation” groups like the Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation.
- Socialist and reactionary groups bent on transforming the USA into a socialist state modeled initially on the European Union and eventually the Russian, Venezuelan, and Chinese models of dictatorship.
- University academics profiting from government grants to justify changes.
- Bureaucrats designing expanded bureaucracies and budgets to “handle” “necessary” future changes.
- Politicians pandering to all of the above to ensure their continuation in office and the benefits from catering to rich and powerful forces.

A short list of the traditions targeted by these groups for extinction would include such things as:
- Private property
- Hunting
- Fishing
- Trapping
- American history (replaced with “politically correct” propaganda)
- Forest management and use
- Range management and use
- Wildlife management and use
- Public land management and use
- Ranching
- Farming
- Medical research
- Animal ownership
- Animal use
- Guns
- Parental rights
- Marriage
- Religion
- What we drive
- What we eat
- How we live
- Where we live
- Rural living
- Rural lifestyles
- Individual freedom to the greatest degree attainable.

Each of us could add more to this list and each of us has an idea of the importance of each item cited, but no one can deny that these things are all slated for “more controls” and more “permits” signifying government permission and requirements, and eventual replacement with the orders and wishes of a remote and powerful government enforced by faceless bureaucracies. In short, these TRADITIONS are in real danger of being taken from us and we are ignoring this at our own peril.

Our lives will be far poorer both in our prime and in our old age, not because of “too many people” or “reduced expectations” or “energy shortages”: our lives and those of our descendants will be poorer because there will only be government dictates and NO TRADITIONS. The implications go far beyond your concerns as a pet owner or your “feelings” about cockfighting or someone slaughtering their horse. If this trend is allowed to continue, not only rural Americans but even rich urban Americans will be swallowed up by the beast they are unleashing on rural Americans.

As I write, the federal laws against cockfighting and selling your own horse for slaughter are leading to federal controls of pets and prohibitions against selling your horse to a Mexican or a Canadian. As I write the, years of federal taking private property under the Endangered Species Act for things other than a “public use” without compensation (both as forbidden in the Constitution) is leading to “takings” by every level of government for their own and their “friends” profit. As I write, total protection from all management and use of whales and seals that are decimating fisheries is leading to a steady addition of other animals to such lists just as more and more federal land control is leading to more Wildernesses and Roadless Proclamations and fires and ruined rural economies. As I write, wolves are spreading under federal protection as human attacks increase, pets are killed in increasing numbers, big game herds are declining, livestock losses mount, and school bus stops are built as wolf-proof cages; while proposals to depopulate the Great Plains to introduce buffalo herds are floated and the Mexican border fence is delayed in part because jaguars may want to get back into the US to help ravage ranches and big game herds. As I write, cities join together to make the Supreme Court deny the wording of the 2nd Amendment regarding guns so that more Americans can be disarmed as their TRADITIONS are taken from them.

The only “answer” I know is to talk about the imminent threat and the importance of stopping it. What the good Doctor said last summer about “activities they enjoyed as boys” being important as we grow old really goes to the heart of the importance of TRADITION not just to old men and boys but to all of us. What certain groups are doing to our TRADITIONS must be stopped. This last thing is something that cries out for activities with great “transcendental value” if ever I heard of one.

Please join with your fellow Americans to do whatever it takes to save our TRADITIONS. Your life and the lives of those you love will be far richer for it.

This piece is dedicated to a great man that in two short meetings influenced my life more than he will ever know.

Jim Beers
20 January 2008
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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.