THE ASTERISK
I have a B.S. degree in Wildlife Management, (University of
Maine, 1977) - the education required of state wildlife
biologists and game wardens. I majored in the science of
environmental ecology (a subject distinctly different from
environmentalist politics without the science). I am a
Registered Maine Guide who has hiked and hunted and fished
and canoed and boated and lived in the northern Maine woods
since the mid-1970s, a transplant from the western
mountains of Maine.
I lay serious claim to the titles of Activist, Advisor,
Advisor to the Administration, Economic Advisor, Political
Advisor, Constitutional Analyst, Legal Analyst, Foreign
Policy Analyst, Media Analyst, Military Analyst,
Cryptanalyst, Linguist, Expert, Academic Expert, Unnamed
Source, Strategist, and more... not that anyone listens,
but I am as qualified as anyone named in the news media to
assume any of these monikers. How can that be? I’m active
all the time, even sometimes an agitator, I analyze and
advise and strategize, I’m an expert and a source, and,
yes, I’m a cryptanalyst. The beneficiaries of my activism,
analysis, and advice are those who read my commentary and
advice on these pages.
I'm as much an expert on things political and philosophical
as Chomsky, Chopra, and many other darlings of the
broadcast media. (Just as with me, Chomsky and Chopra each
have a formal education in something far removed from the
meaning of the U.S. Constitution. It's plain to me that I
have read it and they have not, so I claim a greater
expertise in that hallowed document than they can.)
I scoff at news media reports that quote “experts” without
naming them. I’m equally unimpressed by reports that credit
“unnamed sources”, “legal analysts”, “political advisors”,
and the like. I’m analyzing politics and laws and the media
all the time. I write letters to elected officials giving
my advice. I’m an expert on quite a few things, especially
in dealing with the messes created by “enabling
legislation”. And this web site is my political activism.
The government of the USA was designed not to be a religion
that could only be interpreted by high priests. It was
designed to be understood by anyone. I do my honest best to
understand law as handed down, and I refuse to employ a
cadre of lawyers to help me make it through an average day.
Those in state legislatures around the country and in the
Congress of the USA who have any respect for the insane
complexity of current law and who are willing to muck it up
further do not have my respect. Government was not meant to
identify all the problems I didn’t even know I had and
point out all the offenses that I didn’t imagine have ever
been committed against me. I don’t need that kind of help,
and I especially don’t need government's solutions to all
those non-problems. I believe in the complete ineptitude of
a government to solve any problem except its practitioners’
re-election or re-appointment.
No one in government takes my advice, nor the advice of
others with a lot more influence in publishing and
commentary - voices such as Ann Coulter, George Will, Bill
Kristol, William F. Buckley, Jr., Robert Bork, Milton
Friedman, Ayn Rand. But I cannot remain silent in the
presence of so great a travesty as the federal government's
and the Maine government's failures each to meet its simple
obligations. Like Cindy Lou Who, I add my voice.
1 October 2005
©DamnYankee.com
