This is How Democracy Works! 7 April 2018
To My Elected Official with Sincere Respects,
I am writing to you as a constituent in order to express my thoughts and views on the integrity of legacy environmental legislation and on the importance of public lands, the Endangered Species Act, clean air, clean water, and other historic, hard-fought measures of our National strength, National integrity, and National security. As you now stand in a position of responsibility and ambition, I am asking you in my 48 years of wisdom to consider the deep, unfailing and historic precedence set by legacy legislation as envisioned in the last 100 years as a means of protecting our livable environment and thriving economy for those "yet unborn to the womb of time." The environmental wealth of our times did not happen by accident, and we owe those of the past who dedicated their lives to conservation and those of the future who depend on it the common decency to respect the work that has been done. We do not wish to lose what has been so diligently restored, recovered, and reclaimed over the last century.
Our long-term, durable, economic health, security and stability rest squarely on the broad back of our ecological health and human health. It is a balancing act that is attained through service to others before self, not through selfishness and cronyism and serving the very few. Wilderness, public lands, clean air, clean water, and healthy ecosystems are a great and durable investment into the wealth and health of our nation and no less ever.
We live in good times! My kids drink water directly from the lakes of Northern Minnesota! Luxury of good living gives the strength of longevity in reason! I am asking you at this time, my elected official, to be a person of vision. Consider the science of sustainable energy, the science of modern economics in a world of finite material resources. I want it to be known that many of us want to protect the strength of our Endangered Species Act, to protect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and its waters from the dangers of mining within the watershed, and to prevent the divestment of our Federal and State public lands to private interests. We are living in times of plenty, but we seem to have forgotten. America is truly great, truly strong, and has the economic and human resources to move forward sustainably and without peril while still showing ethical restraint. Fear politics and cronyism, waged by a few, are real threats to the American democracy.
A good friend of mine, now lost to time, served as a pilot in World War II. He often spoke of how disappointed he had become in the modern political system. This was a man who had been personally invited to presidential inaugurations, had shaken hands with General Patton, General Eisenhower, and England's Winston Churchill. He said that the political system was lost to corruption and corporate greed, spawning a lack of intelligence, service, and reason. Moving forward, let us do our best to prove him wrong. Please prove that good man, that friend of mine, wrong in those thoughts through political actions that speak of the rich integrity of a future America, confident in strength and resourceful in conservation.
Our natural resources belong NOT just to you and me, but to our unborn great grandchildren. For the "American experiment" to move into its greatest reality, we must remain dedicated to an America that serves the health of our future. Showing ethical restraint, we must invest in the health of our common ecology and humanity.
Sincerely,
Brian M. Collins
Saint Croix Falls, Wisconsin
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