Sanctuary

A reader that is considering running for a County elected position has
written me and asked for more information about the SANCTUARY movement in
many county and city jurisdictions.  This movement has been mentioned in
several of my recent columns.  I have given some more thought to this
phenomenon and to what I might say to him.  My response is as follows and
once I wrote it, I figured it might be worth sharing.

Mike,

Thanks for your inquiry about the Sanctuary movement and how it might
perhaps be useful as a political point in the case of someone running for
office on a platform of protecting property rights, freedom, and the
traditions that underpin much rural American life.

I first mentioned the Sanctuary movement a couple of months ago because I
was struck by the contradiction of urban factions (Counties, Cities,
political machines, and organizations) formally exempting themselves from
any enforcement or recognition of the Federal laws concerning Immigration
and the illegal status of criminals both charged and found guilty.  This is
done by Mayors, County Executives, political party bosses, and citizen
advocacy organizations banning together to formally proclaiming that police
and bureaucrats under their authority may NOT, under penalty of being fired
or charged with some crime, enforce any Federal law concerning Immigration
status.  They then give long lists of reasons why THEY are entitled to take
such UNCOOPERATIVE ACTION in these supposedly United States.  They talk of
human dignity and being busy with other things and not being paid to do it
and even just plain NOT WANTING TO DO IT.

Now aside from the radical concept of any State or local authority brazenly
saying they do not like and will not enforce laws concerning A, B, or C and
aside from the same locals expecting the Federal government to give them
NCIC checks and instant information about warrants, wanted status and other
things FROM ALL OTHER STATES: there was one other striking fact involved.
With few exceptions these are THE SAME Counties, cities, political machines,
and urban-oriented organizations that have conceived and gained passage of
all the extreme environmental and radical animal rights laws that are being
enforced on rural America.  Property rights are being decimated (ESA, horse
slaughter ban, hunting bans, trapping restrictions, Marine Mammal
protections, medical experiment use of animals, cockfighting bans, anti-fur
campaigns, etc.).  Rural America is being depopulated and strangled
economically (continual state and Federal land acquisition; subsidized
easements on a massive scale; Wilderness Declarations; Roadless Area
closures; Presidential Proclamations [Executive Orders]; Environmental
lawsuits; anti-logging campaigns; hunting and fishing area closures for
everything from specious "endangered species" claims to excuses to destroy
dams or stop development; forest fires that get hotter, more expensive,
larger, and more impossible to fight every year; grazing lease buyouts;
predator introductions and protection; etc.).  All this by largely the same
factions and Federal politicians that enact or acquiesce in the concept of
exempting themselves from Federal laws they either do not agree with or
simply find inconvenient.

My purpose was to perhaps give pause to some of these urban zealots by
pointing out how you should not be expecting to oppress your neighbor by
dictating how YOU think he should treat his dog or HOW he makes a living or
WHERE he lives or How he recreates by concocting and forcing Federal
mandates on HIM while YOU pick and choose which particular Federal laws you
will recognize or enforce.  Some would say I am wasting my time but I try.

Now you as a potential rural candidate for local office have taken this
contradiction one step further and asked how it might be employed by all
those rural folks being hammered by these extreme environmental laws and
radical animal rights laws and regulations being forced from the top down
just like the Immigration laws.  You also very adroitly mention how in
several states, particular large cities (Chicago, NY, Boston, LA, etc.),
similarly force such laws on rural residents at the behest of urban
constituencies.  The one thing that these large cities have in common with
the Federal laws they spawn and the urban-elite state laws they concoct is
that while they erode property rights and decimate freedoms and rights and
traditions and slowly vacate the countryside THEY DO NOT AFFECT THE URBAN
CONSTITUENCIES ONE BIT.

It is a fact here in Virginia and in many other urban-oriented states like
MD and NY and MA and IL and CA the state governments quietly acquiesce in
these declarations of non-compliance and non-cooperation by urban Counties
and Cities regarding laws they disagree with.  There is no intervention by
the Virginia government on my County of Fairfax or cities like Arlington
that proclaim no recognition of Federal immigration laws or the status of
criminals that are accused of breaking other laws in these jurisdictions.
So you may have a point: as pernicious as this very un-American approach is,
it may be the means of rural survival in these times.

If big cities, political machines, radical organizations and urban counties
can get votes and political support by simply declaring their determination
to ignore Federal Immigration Law violators: why not do the same with
extremist Environmental laws and radical animal rights laws?  Counties or
indeed States or Townships could declare themselves Environmental Law
Sanctuaries.  They could likewise declare themselves as Animal Property
Owner Sanctuaries or just Property Rights Sanctuaries.  Why not, indeed?

Men like yourself could explain this platform and run for office on it.  If
you can generate votes, your big city and Federal cousins (and the political
machines behind them) would have to take notice.  The least benefit of
success would be to delay the environmental and animal rights jihads (like
bringing the border with Mexico back under control) while the seeds of their
destruction grow to maturity.  BY seeds of their own destruction I mean all
the things I mentioned in the third paragraph.  Sure enough, just like
communism and all the other "isms" in the dustbin of history, these
oppressions will evoke the reactions they always have and either they will
fall of their own weight or guys like you will take it apart piece by piece
just like they put it together.

Good Luck and thanks for asking about this.

Jim

Jim Beers
27 August 2007

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http://jimbeers.blogster.com   (Jim Beers Common Sense)

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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.