The
persistent
myth that conservation and environmental protection are liberal causes
continues to be perpetuated by the media, liberals and many
self-professed "conservatives." The truth is that conservation and
environmental stewardship are core conservative values.
The
misperception stems from the fact that the GOP establishment has lost
sight of these values (largely due to the influence of corporate
lobbies and political leaders beholden to them for campaign support)
and from the willingness of populist Democrats to embrace environmental
protection. The result has been a polarizing battle that is not at all
about the advance of conservative principles, but rather the advance of
special interest political agendas.
Republicans
for
Environmental Protection and its sister organization ConservAmerica
have been arguing that Conservation is
Conservativetm since their inception. The
argument is based on
essential elements of conservative thought that have been articulated
by conservatives throughout history, including the very founders of
modern conservatism.
The
quotations
below will confirm this and provide insight into why conservation is
indeed conservative.
One may
scroll down through all of the quotes (they are generally organized
chronologically) or jump to a specific individual's quotations by
clicking the name link below:
Edmund
Burke, Theodore
Roosevelt, Irving Babbit,
Herbert Hoover,
T.S. Eliot,
Richard Weaver,
Russell Kirk,
Richard Nixon,
John Saylor,
Barry
Goldwater, Gerald R. Ford,
Ronald Reagan,
Pope Benedict
XVI,
Pope John Paul II,
Margaret
Thatcher, John
McCain, Newt Gingrich,
Jeffrey
Hart, William
Harbour, Wendell Berry,
Gordon
Durnil, Rod Dreher, Paul Weyrich
Edmund
Burke
(1729 - 1797)
Burke
was an
Irish-born English statesman who is generally regarded as the founder
of "true" conservatism and the greatest of all modern conservative
thinkers. Burke's intellectual criticism of the French Revolution
entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France
provided
conservatism its most influential statement of views.
____________________
"The
great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be
satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement; not to compound with our
Condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit
after more."
A
Vindication of Natural Society, 1757
"Never,
no, never, did Nature say one thing, and Wisdom say another."
Third
Letter on Regicide Peace, 1797
"One
of
the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its
laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life renters
in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of
what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire
masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off
the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their
pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to those
who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation...No one generation
could link with another. Men would become little better than flies of a
summer."
Reflections
on the Revolution in France,
page 44
"Society...is
a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership
in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a
partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a
partnership not only between those who are living, but between those
who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
Reflections,
page 96 (114)?
"Men
have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their
benefit."
Reflections
on the Revolution in France,
page 335
"Knowledge
of those unalterable Relations which Providence has
ordained that every
thing should bear to every other...To these we should conform in good
Earnest; and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her
System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our
artificial Regulations."
A Vindication of Natural
Society, 1757
"Prudence
is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but
she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all."
Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs: In Consequence of Some
Late Discussions in Parliament, Relative to the Reflections on the
French Revolution, 1791
Theodore
Roosevelt
(1858 - 1919)
The
26th
President of the United
States, Theodore Roosevelt
embodied
the conservative values of personal responsibility, hard work and
prudence. He abhorred waste and sought to protect capitalism from the
excesses of greed. He believed that conservation was essential for
keeping America
strong. Roosevelt
was a champion of
the Burkean ideal that a moral partnership exists between present and
future generations. That view helped instruct his passion for
conserving America's
natural resources.
____________________
"Conservation
is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring
the safety and continuance of the nation."
New
Nationalism speech, Ossowatomie, Kansas,
August 31, 1910
"Optimism
is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes
foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as
inexhaustible; this is not so."
Seventh
Annual Message to Congress, December 3,
1907
"We
of an
older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing
hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what
nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed;
and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have
used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth
lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without
husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could
with difficulty find him the bare means of life."
"Arbor Day - A
Message to the School-Children of the United States"
April 15, 1907
"There
can
be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country."
Confession
of Faith Speech, Progressive
National Convention, Chicago, IL,
August 6, 1912
"Conservation
of our resources is the fundamental question before this nation, and
that our first and greatest task is to set our house in order and begin
to live within our means."
January 1909, in letter
transmitting report of National
Conservation Commission to Congress
"Defenders
of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if
permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless
extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to
champion them by saying the 'the game belongs to the people.' So it
does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people.
The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number
within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an
insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn
generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from
wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the
conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation
of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit,
purpose, and method."
A
Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open, 1916
"The
conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we
solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others."
Address
to the Deep Waterway Convention, Memphis, TN,
October 4, 1907
"To
waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land
instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in
undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we
ought by right to hand down to them."
Seventh
message to Congress, December 3, 1907
"Nothing
should be permitted to stand in the way of the preservation of the
forests, and it is criminal to permit individuals to purchase a little
gain for themselves through the destruction of forests when this
destruction is fatal to the well-being of the whole country in the
future."
Eighth
Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1908
"I
do not intend that our natural resources should be exploited by the few
against the interests of the many"
Acceptance
speech, 1912 Bull Moose convention
"Fertile
plains, every foot of them tilled, are of the first necessity; but
great natural playgrounds of mountain, forest, cliff-walled lake, and
brawling brook are also necessary to the full and many-sided
development of a fine race."
Book
Review, The Outlook, January 20, 1915
Irving
Babbitt
(1865 - 1933)
Irving
Babbitt
was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding
role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism that advocated
a forceful doctrine of moderation and restraint. A disciple of Plato
and Burke, Babbitt was a significant influence on literary discussion
and conservative thought in the period between 1910 to 1930.
___________________
"Commercialism
is laying its great greasy paw upon everything (including the
irresponsible quest of thrills); so that, whatever democracy may be
theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as
standardized and commercialized melodrama."
On Being
Creative, page 428
Herbert
Hoover
(1874 - 1964)
The
31st
President of the United
States, Hoover
entered office with a spectacular record of public service as an
engineer, administrator, and humanitarian, but he quickly became a
scapegoat for the Great Depression. Concerned about the frenzied and
dangerous speculation in the stock market leading up to the crash, Hoover
tried to
stop banks from speculating with their depositors' money. A man who
found inspiration and refreshment in the outdoors throughout his life,
he had a solid record on land conservation. He used his authority under
the Antiquities Act to establish or enlarge 10 national monuments. He
appointed a commission that set the stage for an additional 3 million
acres of national parks and 2.3 million acres of national forests.
After leaving office, Hoover
became a powerful critic of the New Deal, warning against tendencies
toward statism.
_______________
"The
spiritual uplift, the goodwill, cheerfulness and optimism that
accompanies every expedition to the outdoors is the peculiar spirit
that our people need in times of suspicion and doubt...No other
organized joy has values comparable to the outdoor experience."
Speech
to National Conference on Outdoor
Recreation, 1925
"The
only trouble with capitalism is capitalists - they are too damn greedy."
Widely
attributed
"No
prosaic description can portray the grandeur of 40 miles of rugged
mountains rising beyond a placid lake in which each shadowy precipice
and each purple gorge is reflected with a vividness that rivals the
original."
Letter
to sister May written during Lake
Tahoe geological expedition, August 1895
"The
people have a vital interest in the conservation of their natural
resources; in the prevention of wasteful practices."
Annual
Message to Congress, December 2, 1930
"I
can at
once refute the statement that the people of the West object to
conservation of oil resources. They know that there is a limit to oil
supplies and that the time will come when they and the Nation will need
this oil much more than it is needed now. There are no half measures in
conservation of oil."
Statement
on Oil Conservation Policies, March
15, 1929
T.S.
Eliot
(1888 - 1965)
Thomas
Stearns
Eliot, was an American (naturalized British) poet, playwright and
essayist, and he won the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was one of
the most influential poets of the 20th century. Russell Kirk described
Eliot as the "principle conservative thinker in the twentieth century."
____________________
"Religion,
as distinguished from modern paganism, implies a life in conformity
with nature. It may be observed that the natural life and the
supernatural life have a conformity to each other which neither has
with the mechanistic life...A wrong attitude towards nature implies,
somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God...[We should] struggle to
recover the sense of relation to nature and to God."
Christianity
and Culture, pages 48 and 49
"Conservatism
is too often the conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a
relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things."
Christianity
and Culture, page 77
Richard
Weaver
(1910 - 1963)
Weaver
was a
noted American conservative scholar whose influential book Ideas
Have Consequences helped shape conservative
thought in
post-World War II America. Regarded as both a traditionalist
conservative and a Southern Agrarian, his defense of property rights
has also made him popular among Libertarians.
_________________
"Somehow
the notion has been loosed that nature is hostile to man or that her
ways are offensive or slovenly, so that every step of progress is
measured by how far we have altered these. Nothing short of a recovery
of the ancient virtue of pietas can absolve man from this sin."
Ideas
Have Consequences (1948), page 171
"The
prevailing attitude towards nature is that form of heresy which denies
substance and, in doing so, denies the rightfulness of creation. We
have said - to the point of repletion, perhaps - that man is not to
take his patterns from nature; but neither is he to waste himself in
seeking to change her face."
Ideas
Have Consequences, page 171
"The
modern position seems only another manifestation of egotism, which
develops when man has reached a point at which he will no longer admit
the rights to existence of things not of his own contriving."
Ideas
Have Consequences, page 171
"The
true religion, it is said, is service to mankind; but this service
seems to take the form of securing for him an unconditional victory
over nature. Now this attitude is impious, for, as has been noted, it
violates the belief that creation or nature is fundamentally good, that
the ultimate reason for its laws is a mystery, and that acts of
defiance such as are daily celebrated by the newspapers are subversive
of cosmos."
Ideas
Have Consequences, pages 171 and 172
"We
are
more successfully healed by the vis
medicatrix naturae
(healing power of nature) than by the most ingenious medical
application."
Ideas
Have Consequences, page 172
"Our
planet is falling victim to a rigorism, so that what is done in any
remote corner affects - nay, menaces - the whole. Resiliency and
tolerance are lost."
Ideas
Have Consequences, page 173
"Triumphs
against the natural order of living exact unforeseen payments. At the
same time that man attempts to straighten a crooked nature, he is
striving to annihilate space, which seems but another phase of the war
against substance. We ignore the fact that space and matter are shock
absorbers; the more we diminish them the more we reduce our privacy and
security."
Ideas
Have Consequences, page 173
"Nature
is
not something to be fought, conquered and changed according to any
human whims. To some extent, of course, it has to be used. But what man
should seek in regard to nature is not a complete domination but a modus
vivendi - that is, a manner of living together, a coming to
terms
with something that was here before our time and will be here after it.
The important corollary of this doctrine, it seems to me, is that man
is not the lord of creation, with an omnipotent will, but a part of
creation, with limitations, who ought to observe a decent humility in
the face of the inscrutable."
The
Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, pages
220 and 221
Russell
Kirk
(1919 - 1994)
Kirk
was an
American political theorist credited with giving rise to conservatism's
intellectual respectability in post-World War II America. His seminal
work, The Conservative Mind: From
Burke to Eliot
(1953), is widely regarded as the most influential text in
twentieth-century conservative thought. President Reagan noted, "As the
prophet of American conservatism, Russell Kirk has taught, nurtured,
and inspired a generation."
________________
"Nothing
is more conservative than conservation"
Conservation
Activism is a Healthy Sign, Baltimore Sun,
May 4, 1970
"The
modern spectacle of vanished forests and eroded lands, wasted petroleum
and ruthless mining, national debts recklessly increased until they are
repudiated, and continual revision of positive law, is evidence of what
an age without veneration does to itself and its successors."
The
Conservative Mind: >From Burke to Eliot
(1953), pages 44-45
"The
resources of nature, like those of spirit, are running out, and all
that a conscientious man can aspire to be is a literal conservative,
hoarding what remains of culture and of natural wealth against the
fierce appetites of modern life."
The
Conservative Mind, page 362
"...only
the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation
of the countryside."
"Conservation
Activism is a Healthy Sign," Baltimore Sun,
May 4, 1970
"The
issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional
political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very
sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks,
and middle-class straights."
"Common
Reader for Everyday
Ecologists," New
Orleans
Times-Picayune, Sept. 20, 1971
"Every
right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding
responsibility."
Redeeming
the Time (1996), page 33
"True
conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past
and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of
the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience
only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of
posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity."
The Conservative Mind, page 57
"...so
mankind is now trapped by the failure of its energies and by the
depletion of those natural resources that men have plundered wantonly."
The
Conservative Mind, page 364
"If
men are discharged of reverence for ancient usage, they will treat this
world, almost certainly, as if it were their private property, to be
consumed for their sensual gratification; and thus they will destroy in
their lust for enjoyment the property of future generations, of their
own contemporaries, and indeed their very own capital."
The
Conservative Mind, page 44
"The
decay
of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the
undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice)... the
debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these
particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits
are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values."
The
Conservative Mind, page 140
"This
network of personal relationships and local decencies was brushed aside
by steam, coal, the spinning jenny, the cotton gin, speedy
transportation, and the other items in that catalogue of progress which
schoolchildren memorize. The Industrial Revolution seems to have been a
response of mankind to the challenge of a swelling population...But it
turned the world inside out. Personal loyalties gave way to financial
relationships. The wealthy man ceased to be magistrate and patron; he
ceased to be a neighbor to the poor man; he became a mass man, very
often, with no purpose in life but aggrandizement. He ceased to be
conservative because he did not understand conservative terms."
The
Conservative Mind, page 228
"To
complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to
arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the
conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument
in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion,
centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From
this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton
was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in
the United
States
never have fully escaped."
The
Conservative Mind, page 229
"Rather
than ennobling the public mind and cementing the social fabric, applied
science speedily became the chief weapon of a gross individualism,
which was anathema to the frugal and righteous (John Quincy) Adams, the
source of enormous fortunes divorced from duty, the instrument of
unscrupulous ambition and rapacious materialism. Presently, it came to
scar the very of the country which Adams
loved, a disfiguring process uninterrupted since his day."
The
Conservative Mind, page 237
"The
automobile, practical since 1906, was proceeding to disintegrate and
stamp anew the pattern of communication, manners, and city life in the
United States, by 1918; before long, men would begin to see that the
automobile, and the mass production techniques which made its possible,
could alter the national character and morality more thoroughly than
could the most absolute of tyrants. As a mechanical Jacobin, it rivaled
the dynamo. The productive process which made these vehicles cheap was
still more subversive of the old ways than was the gasoline engine
itself."
The
Conservative Mind, pages 373-374
"Humility,
which Burke ranked high among the virtues, is the only effectual
restraint upon this congenital vanity; yet our world has nearly
forgotten the nature of humility. Submission to the dictates of
humility formerly was made palatable to man by the doctrine of grace;
that elaborate doctrine has been overwhelmed by modern presumption."
The Conservative Mind, page 426
"The
principle of real leadership ignored, the immortal objects of society
forgotten, practical conservatism degenerated into mere laudation of
private enterprise, economic policy almost wholly surrendered to
special interests."
The
Conservative Mind, page 455
"To
check
centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new
laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension
of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character
often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed
the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of
humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose."
The
Conservative Mind, page 489
"Why
do we not exhaust the heritage of the ages, spiritual and material for
our immediate pleasure, and let posterity go hang? So far as simple
rationality is concerned, self-interest can advance no argument against
the appetite of present possessors. Yet within some of us, a voice that
is not the demand of self-interest or pure rationality says that we
have no right to give ourselves enjoyment at the expense of our
ancestors' memory and our descendants' prospects. We hold our present
advantages only in trust."
The
Problem of Tradition As
appeared in A Program for Conservatives (Washington, D.C.: Regnery,
1956).
"...ambition
without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its
ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the
obscurity and poverty of their lot."
The
Conservative Mind, page 35
"And
Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a
consumption-society, so near to suicide, is the end for which Providence
has
prepared man."
The
Conservative Mind, page 11
Richard
Nixon
(1913 - 1994)
The
37th
President of the United
States,
Richard Nixon is widely credited with broadening the base of the
Republican Party and setting the stage for conservatism to become America's
dominant political tradition. His 1968 campaign was fueled by his sharp
criticism of the 1960s counterculture and anti-war movement. While
Nixon espoused conservative views, he often tempered conviction with
pragmatism. Nixon helped enact many of the nation's landmark
environmental laws, which he saw as a means of unifying the nation.
______________________
"The
great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our
surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make
reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to
our water?"
Annual
Message to Congress on the State of the Union,
1970
"Restoring
nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond
factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this
country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans,
because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our
failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent
disaster later."
Annual
Message to Congress on the State of the Union,
1970
"Clean
air, clean water, open spaces -- these should once again be the
birthright of every American."
Annual
Message to Congress on the State of the Union,
1970
"We
still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is
clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our
years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that
debt is being called."
Annual
Message to Congress on the State of the Union,
1970
"As
our cities and suburbs relentlessly expand, those priceless open spaces
needed for recreation areas accessible to their people are swallowed
up--often forever. Unless we preserve these spaces while they are still
available, we will have none to preserve."
Annual
Message to Congress on the State of the Union,
1970
"We
can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to
be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we
should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no
more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our
neighbor's yard."
Annual
Message to Congress on the State of the Union,
1970
"Nothing
is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array
of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is
a
many-faceted treasure, of value to scholars, scientists, and nature
lovers alike, and it forms a vital part of the heritage we all share as
Americans."
Statement
on Signing the Endangered Species Act
of 1973, December 28th, 1973
"...we
must strike a balance so that the protection of our irreplaceable
heritage becomes as important as its use. The price of economic growth
need not and will not be deterioration in the quality of our lives and
our surroundings."
State
of the Union Message on Natural Resources
and the Environment, February 14th, 1973
"...because
there are no local or State boundaries to the problems of our
environment, the Federal Government must play an active, positive role.
We can and will set standards. We can and will exercise leadership."
State
of the Union Message on Natural Resources
and the Environment, February 14th, 1973
"People
should not have to pay for pollution they do not cause."
State
of the Union Message on Natural Resources
and the Environment, February 14th, 1973
"The
destiny of our land, the air we breathe, the water we drink is not in
the mystical hands of an uncontrollable agent, it is in our hands. A
future which brings the balancing of our resources--preserving quality
with quantity--is a future limited only by the boundaries of our will
to get the job done."
State
of the Union Message on Natural Resources
and the Environment, February 14th, 1973
"The
1970s must be the years when America
pays its debt to
the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our
living environment. It is literally now or never."
Statement
About the National Environmental
Policy Act of 1969, January 1st, 1970
"Because
the public lands belong to all Americans, this 1872 Mining Act should
be repealed..."
State
of the Union Message on Natural Resources
and the Environment, February 14th, 1973
"An
important measure of our true commitment to environmental quality is
our dedication to protecting the wilderness and its inhabitants. We
must recognize their ecological significance and preserve them as
sources of inspiration and education. And we need them as places of
quiet refuge and reflection."
State
of the Union Message on Natural Resources
and the Environment, February 14th, 1973
"As
we work to expand our supplies of energy, we should also recognize that
we must balance those efforts with our concern to preserve our
environment. In the past, as we have sought new energy sources, we have
too often damaged or despoiled our land."
State
of the Union Message on Natural Resources
and the Environment, February 14th, 1973
"The
recent upsurge of public concern over environmental questions reflects
a belated recognition that man has been too cavalier in his relations
with nature. Unless we arrest the depredations that have been inflicted
so carelessly on our natural systems--which exist in an intricate set
of balances--we face the prospect of ecological disaster."
Message
to the Congress Transmitting the First
Annual Report of the Council on Environmental Quality, August 10th, 1970
"'Environment'
is not an abstract concern, or simply a matter of aesthetics, or of
personal taste -- although it can and should involve these as well. Man
is shaped to a great extent by his surroundings. Our physical nature,
our mental health, our culture and institutions, our opportunities for
challenge and fulfillment, our very survival -- all of these are
directly related to and affected by the environment in which we live.
They depend upon the continued healthy functioning of the natural
systems of the Earth."
Message
to the Congress Transmitting the First
Annual Report of the Council on Environmental Quality, August 10th, 1970
"The
basic causes of our environmental troubles are complex and deeply
embedded. They include: our past tendency to emphasize quantitative
growth at the expense of qualitative growth; the failure of our economy
to provide full accounting for the social costs of environmental
pollution; the failure to take environmental factors into account as a
normal and necessary part of our planning and decision making; the
inadequacy of our institutions for dealing with problems that cut
across traditional political boundaries; our dependence on
conveniences, without regard for their impact on the environment; and
more fundamentally, our failure to perceive the environment as a
totality and to understand and to recognize the fundamental
interdependence of all its parts, including man himself."
Message
to the Congress Transmitting the First
Annual Report of the Council on Environmental Quality, August 10th, 1970
John
Saylor
(1908 - 1973)
A
conservative
Republican congressman from Pennsylvania,
Saylor was nicknamed "Mr. Conservation" by his colleagues in the House.
A hawk on national defense who received consistently high ratings from
the American Conservative Union and Americans for Constitutional
Action, Saylor served in Congress from 1949 until his death in 1973.
Congressman Saylor is best known as the driving force behind passage of
the Wilderness Act of 1964, and the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
_________________________
"Shall
we,
exploiting all our resources, reduce also every last bit of our
wilderness to roadsides of easy convenience, and ourselves soften into
an easy-going people deteriorating in luxury and ripening for the hardy
conquerors of another century?"
Floor
speech, U.S. House of Representatives,
July 1956
"In
the
wilderness, we can get our bearings. We can keep from getting blinded
in our great human success to the fact that we are part of the life of
this planet and we would do well to keep our perspectives and keep in
touch with some of the basic facts of life."
Floor
speech, U.S. House of Representatives,
July 1956
"The
people of all America love the land which ... made it possible for us
to realize our great freedoms - not only our freedom from fear and want
but also those other great freedoms of religion, of the press, of
speech that have come to a people so richly endowed with natural
resources and thereby blessed with independence."
Floor
speech, U.S. House of Representatives,
July 1956
Barry
Goldwater
(1909
- 1998)
Dubbed
"Mr.
Conservative", Barry Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator
from Arizona
and the Republican Party's candidate for President in the 1964
election. A gifted photographer who produced beautiful pictures
illustrating his beloved Arizona
landscape, Goldwater is credited with sparking the resurgence of the
American conservative movement with his presidential campaign. Later in
life, he expressed regret for supporting construction of the Glen
Canyon Dam. In 1996, Goldwater joined Republicans for Environmental
Protection.
_________________________
"While
I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it
entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right our people to live
in a clean and pollution-free environment."
"The
Conscience of a Majority (1970)"
"At
this
sunset hour, the canyon walls are indescribably beautiful and I fear
the magic of photography can never record what I see now. The tall
spires near the canyon's top and the walls of the canyon up there look
as if God had reached out and swiped a brush of golden paint across
them, gilding these rocks in the bright glow of the setting sun."
"An Odyssey of the Green and
Colorado Rivers," 1940
"We
are on
the Colorado...that means something more to me than thoughts of
electrical power or a harnessed river."
"An
Odyssey of the Green and Colorado Rivers,"
1940
"Well,
once you've been in the Canyon and once you've sort of fallen in love
with it, it never ends...it's always been a fascinating place to me, in
fact I've often said that if I ever had a mistress it would be the
Grand Canyon."
boatman's
quarterly review, interview with
Barry Goldwater, fall 1994
"My
mother
took us to services at the Episcopal church. Yet she always said that
God was not just inside the four walls of a house of worship, but
everywhere -- in the rising sun over Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, a
splash of water along the nearby Salt or Verde rivers, or clouds
driving over the Estrella Mountains, south of downtown. I've always
thought of God in those terms."
"Goldwater"
(1988)
Gerald
R. Ford
(1913 - 2006)
The
38th
President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford's tenure in the White
House was brief, but significant conservation achievements took place
during his administration, including adoption of motor vehicle fuel
efficiency standards, the creation of 18 national parks, and
designation of 3.4 million acres of wilderness areas. A skilled athlete
and outdoorsman, Ford is the only president to have worked as a
national park ranger. He was a seasonal ranger at Yellowstone National
Park during the summer of 1936.
_________________________
"We
have too long treated the natural world as an adversary rather than as
a life-sustaining gift from the Almighty. If man has the genius to
build, which he has, he must also have the ability and the
responsibility to preserve."
Remarks
at dedication of National Environmental
Research Center, July 3, 1975
"I
remember as a ranger the first time I stood alone on Inspiration Point
over at Canyon Station looking out over this beautiful land. I thought
to myself how lucky I was that my parents' and grandparents' generation
had the vision and the determination to save it for us. Now it is our
turn to make our own gift outright to those who will come after us, 15
years, 40 years, 100 years from now. I want to be as faithful to my
grandchildren's generation as Old Faithful has been to ours. What
better way can we add a new dimension to our third century of freedom?"
Remarks
at Yellowstone National Park, August
29, 1976
Ronald
Reagan
(1911 - 2004)
The
40th
President of the United
States,
Ronald Reagan emerged in the 1960s as one of America's
preeminent conservatives. He also served two terms as the Governor of
California (1967-1975). Known as the "Great Communicator," Reagan was
without equal in convincingly articulating conservative values to the
American public. Although not generally credited with a strong
environmental record, Reagan signed 43 wilderness bills into law
designating a net total of 10.6 million acres, and was instrumental in U.S.
ratification of the Montreal Protocol -- which has dramatically reduced
emissions of gases that deplete the upper atmosphere's protective ozone
layer.
___________________
"If
we've
learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most
important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan
challenge; it's common sense. Our physical health, our social
happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of
us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our
natural resources."
Remarks
on signing annual report of Council on
Environmental Quality, July 11, 1984
"A
strong
nation is one that is loved by its people and, as Edmund Burke put it,
for a country to be loved it ought to be lovely."
Message to Congress
transmitting Council on Environmental
Quality's annual report, February 19, 1986
"The
preservation of parks, wilderness, and wildlife has also aided liberty
by keeping alive the 19th century sense of adventure and awe with which
our forefathers greeted the American West. Many laws protecting
environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property
against the destrutctive trespass of
pollution. In our own
time, the nearly universal appreciation of these preserved landscapes,
restored waters, and cleaner air through outdoor recreation is a modern
expression of our freedom and leisure to enjoy the wonderful life that
generations past have built for us."
Message
to Congress transmitting Council on
Environmental Quality's annual report, October 3, 1988
"Generations
hence, parents will take their children to these woods to show them how
the land must have looked to the first Pilgrims and pioneers. And as
Americans wander through these forests, climb these mountains, they
will sense the love and majesty of the Creator of all of that."
Remarks
upon signing legislation
designating wilderness in North Carolina, New Hampshire, Vermont and
Wisconsin, June 19, 1984
"The Montreal Protocol is a
model of cooperation. It is a product of the recognition and
international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both
in terms of its causes and its effects. The protocol is the result of
an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among
representatives of the business and environmental communities, and
international diplomacy. It is a monumental achievement."
Statement
on signing the instrument of ratification of the Montreal Protocol on
Ozone-Depleting Substances, April 5, 1988
"I
just have to believe that with love for our natural heritage and a firm
resolve to preserve it with wisdom and care, we can and will give the
American land to our children, not impaired, but enhanced. And in doing
this, we'll honor the great and loving God who gave us this land in the
first place."
Remarks
to National Campers and
Hikers Association in Bowling Green, KY, July 12, 1984
"I
believe in a sound, strong environmental policy that protects the
health of our people and a wise stewardship of our nation's natural
resources."
Radio
address to nation on environmental and natural resources management,
June 11, 1983
"I'm
proud of having been one of the first to recognize that states and the
federal government have a duty to protect our natural resources from
the damaging effects of pollution that can accompany industrial
development."
Radio
address to nation on environmental issues, July 14, 1984
"What
is a
conservative after all but one who conserves, one who is committed to
protecting and holding close the things by which we live...And we want
to protect and conserve the land on which we live -- our countryside,
our rivers and mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. This is
our patrimony. This is what we leave to our
children.
And our great moral
responsibility is to leave it to
them either as we found it or better than we found it."
Remarks
at dedication of
National Geographic Society new headquarters building,
June 19, 1984
Pope Benedict XVI (1927 - )
Pope
Benedict XVI, born Joseph
Ratzinger, was elected Pope of the Roman Catholic
Church on April 19, 2005. Known for the depth of his scholarship as a
theologian, Benedict has been outspoken in raising concerns about moral
relativism, poverty, and environmental stewardship.
____________________
"The environment is God's
gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards
the poor, towards future generations, and towards humanity as a whole."
Encyclical
Caritas in Veritate, June 29, 2009
Pope John Paul II (1920 - 2005)
Pope
John Paul
II, born Karol Jozef Wojtyla, reigned as Pope of the Roman Catholic
Church for more than 26 years, from October 16, 1978 until his death in
2005. He was a vigorous and vocal opponent of Communism who is often
credited with contributing to its fall. Later in life he often spoke
out against abortion, cultural relativism, consumerism and unrestrained
capitalism.
____________________
"Equally
worrying is the ecological question which accompanies the problem of
consumerism and which is closely connected to it. In his desire to have
and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, man consumes the resources
of the earth and his own life in an excessive and disordered way. At
the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies
an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day.
Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense
create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always
based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are. Man
thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it
without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own
requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop
but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator
with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God
and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is
more tyrannized than governed by him."
Encyclical
Centesimus Annus, May 1, 1991, page
37
Margaret
Thatcher
(1925 - )
As
leader of Britain's
Conservative Party, Margaret
Thatcher served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
from 1979 to 1990. She is known as a conservative who confronted
powerful unions, revived the British economy, and reinvigorated the
nation's foreign policy. Dubbed the "Iron Lady" by Soviet
leaders, Thatcher was a close ally of President Reagan and supporter of
his policies of deterrence against the Soviet
Union.
_____________________
"We must remember our duty to
Nature before it is too late. That duty is constant. It is never
completed. It lives on as we breathe. It endures as we eat and sleep,
work and rest, as we are born and as we pass away. The duty to Nature
will remain long after our own endeavors have brought peace to the
Middle East. It will weigh on our shoulders for as long as we wish to
dwell on a living and thriving planet, and hand it on to our children
and theirs."
Speech
to World Climate Conference, November 6, 1990
"No
generation has a free hold on this earth. All we have is a life
tenancy--with a full repairing lease."
Speech
to Conservative Party Conference,
October 14, 1988
John McCain (1936 - )
John
McCain has
represented Arizona in the U.S. Congress since 1983, first in the House
and now in his fourth term in the Senate. McCain, who succeeded Barry
Goldwater in the Senate, has emulated "Mr. Conservative's" plain-spoken
style and willingness to steer a maverick course. McCain has been an
outspoken leader on climate change and energy security issues. He was
the Republican nominee for president in 2008. McCain is a
member of REP's Honorary Board.
____________________
"Some
urge we do nothing because we
can't be certain how bad the (climate) problem might become or they
presume the worst effects are most likely to occur in our
grandchildren's lifetime. I'm a proud conservative, and I reject that
kind of live-for-today, ‘me generation,’ attitude. It is
unworthy of us and incompatible with our reputation as visionaries and
problem solvers. Americans have never feared change. We make change
work for us."
Address
at Center for Strategic and
International Studies, April 23, 2007
"For
decades we have been living
lives of abundance, with little regard for our natural resources or
global health. But we are now facing hard choices in our energy policy.
Future generations — my children and grandchildren, along with
yours — will have to live with the decisions we make today. And
so it is time for us to make some tough and — hopefully —
smart choices regarding our energy use and production before it is too
late."
Address
to Clean Cities Congress, May 8, 2006
"Our
nation’s continued
prosperity hinges on our ability to solve environmental problems and
sustain the natural resources on which we all depend."
Op-Ed,
The New York Times, November 22, 1996
Newt Gingrich (1943 - )
Newt
Gingrich
served as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to
1998. Campaigning on his "Contract with America," Gingrich led the
Republican Party to victory in the 1994 congressional elections,
resulting in the first GOP House majority in four decades and a
conservative resurgence in Congress. First elected to the House in
1979, Gingrich left Congress in 1999. A prolific author, Gingrich has
served on a number of advisory commissions on defense, foreign
relations, and health care policy.
____________________
"You
can be totally committed to conservative principles — to
individual liberty, a market economy, entrepreneurship and lower taxes
— and still be a Green Conservative. You can believe that with
the sound use of science and technology and the right incentives to
encourage entrepreneurs, conservatism can provide a better solution for
the health of our planet than can liberalism."
Article,
Human Events Online, April 23, 2007
"The
evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective
possible steps to reduce carbon loading of the atmosphere."
Statement
in debate sponsored by John Brademas
Center for the Study of Congress, April 10, 2007
Jeffrey
Hart
(1930 - )
Often
described
as a conservative icon, Jeffrey Hart is a longtime senior editor at National
Review and Professor Emeritus of English at Dartmouth
College.
A former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, Hart is the
author of Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward
the
Revival of Higher Education and The Making of the
American
Conservative Mind Today.
_____________________
"The
Republican Party once led the nation in conservation, as symbolized by
T.R.'s establishment of the national park system, a source of
recreation and education for the public--conservative education, need
it be said."
The
Making of the American Conservative Mind
Today (2005), page 257
"Plato
taught that the love of beauty led to the good, Eros to Agape. Among
the nonquantifiable needs of civilization are forms of what Burke
called the 'unbought grace of life'...in Burke's formulation, the word
'unbought' should be pondered."
The Making of the American
Conservative Mind Today, page 362
"Burke's
'unbought' beauties are part of civilized life, and therefore ought to
occupy much of the conservative mind. The absence of this consideration
remains a mark of yahooism and is prominent in Republicanism today."
The Making of the American
Conservative Mind Today, page 362
"Momentarily
noticed by National Review, Governor Reagan had a good record on
conservation in California, appointing leading conservationists to key
positions, preserving wilderness areas in the Sierra Nevada and
elsewhere, blocking unnecessary and destructive highway development and
much else of that kind. Yet as if by an intrinsic law, when the free
market becomes a kind of utopianism it maximizes ordinary human
imperfection, unleashing greed, short views, and the resulting
barbarism."
The Making of the American
Conservative Mind Today, page 362
"Beauty
has been clamorously present in the American Conservative Mind through
its almost total absence. The tradition of regard for woodland and
wildlife was present from the beginnings of the nation and continued
through conservative exemplars such as the Republican Theodore
Roosevelt, who established the National Parks. Embarrassingly for
conservatives (at least one hopes it is embarrassing), stewardship of
the environment is now left mostly to liberal Democrats."
Wall
Street Journal OpinionJournal.com, The
Burke Habit: Prudence, skepticism and "unbought grace," December
27, 2005
William
Harbour
(1948 - )
A professor of political
science
at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, since 1976, Harbour is
the author of the book, Foundations of Conservative Thought:
An
Anglo-American Tradition in Perspective.
____________________
"...Conservatism
distrusts talk about freedom that gives exclusive stress to notions of
rights and the claims that individuals make against society while it
ignores the notion of responsibility."
Foundations
of Conservative Thought (1982),
pages 102-103
Wendell
Berry
(1934 - )
An
American
essayist, novelist, poet and farmer, Berry is the
author of more than
forty books of fiction, poetry, and essays. He has been called the
"prophet of rural America"
and his writing often extols the virtues of agrarian life and laments
the negative effects of the industrial economy. He has received
numerous awards for his work, including the T.S. Eliot Award.
______________________
"Our
destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics,
or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid
blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into His face, as if they were of
no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them."
"Christianity
and the Survival of Creation," in
Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community (1993), page 98
"We
have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good
for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it
will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good
for the world will be good for us...We must recover the sense of the
majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its
presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence
before the world that our species will be able to remain in it."
Wendell
Berry, Recollected Essays 1965-1980
(1987)
"In Kentucky,
we're
destroying mountains, including their soils and forests, in order to
get at the coal. In other words, we're destroying a permanent value in
order to get at an almost inconceivably transient value. That coal has
a value only if and when it is burnt. And after it is burnt, it is a
pollutant and a waste--a burden."
A
Conversation with Wendell Berry, CounterPunch
Online, April 15, 2006
"Whether
we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is a party to all our
deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a
sterner sense of justice than we do."
Crunchy
Cons (2006), page 159
"Can
we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly
this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God?
Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction
is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to
live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is
not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our
communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations."
"Compromise,
Hell!" Orion magazine ,
November/December 2004
Gordon
Durnil (1936 - )
A
dedicated
conservative Republican who served for eight years as the Indiana
Republican State Chairman, Durnil was appointed in 1989 by President
George H.W. Bush to be U.S. Chairman of the International Joint
Commission, a bi-national organization whose charge is to safeguard the
environmental resources along the U.S.-Canadian border. He became an
expert on toxic pollution and its effects and is credited as an
architect of "The Precautionary Principle" with respect to toxic
pollution. Mr. Durnil is the author of The Making of a
Conservative
Environmentalist.
__________________
"We
conservatives bemoan the decline in values that has besieged our
society. Why then should we not abhor the lack of morality involved in
discharging untested chemicals into the air, ground, and water to alter
and harm, to whatever degree, human life and wildlife? As a
conservative, I do abhor it."
The
Making of a Conservative Environmentalist,
pages 184 and 185
"A
conservative should believe that industry executives, as well as
individuals, are responsible for their actions."
The
Making of a Conservative Environmentalist,
page 48
Rod
Dreher (1967
- )
A
conservative
journalist, Dreher is a writer/editor for the Dallas Morning
News
and has also worked at the National Review, the Washington
Times and the New York Post. He is the
author of the book Crunchy
Cons, which the former publisher of the National Review
called "a
wake-up call that all who care about conservative ideas should heed."
__________________
"...whatever
the self-righteous excesses of the environmentalist left, it is
impossible to be true to traditional conservative values (to say
nothing of the Christian faith conservatives like me profess) and hold
laissez faire attitudes about the use and abuse of the natural world."
A green
Christian conservative, USA Today,
April 24, 2006
"As
it
turns out, the ecological catastrophe Kirk feared that would be the
consequence of our impiety appears not to be one of radically
diminished resources, but of potentially catastrophic climate change.
It comes from an arrogant refusal by a modern consumerist society to
accept limits on its desires. Kirk's idea of the "eternal society"
evaporates before the insatiable demands of the Everlasting Now."
A green
Christian conservative, USA Today,
April 24, 2006
"If
you
believe that man is inherently flawed--what religious people call
'original sin'--it follows that man, if left to his own devices, will
tend towards ego-driven disharmony. Traditionalist conservatives know
that absent the restraining hand of religion, tradition, or the state,
there is nothing to prevent human beings from acting in ways contrary
to their own best interests, or those of the community."
Crunchy
Cons, page 159
"It's
not easy being a green conservative, but if we conservatives want to be
true to our principles we have to move in that direction. It is morally
right. It is religiously correct. It is economically prudent. It
strengthens national defense. And it makes a better world for our
children, and our children's children."
Crunchy
Cons, page 178
Paul
Weyrich
(1942 - )
A
U.S.
conservative political activist, commentator and founder of the
Heritage Foundation, Weyrich is widely considered an architect of the
"American New Right." He has been a key strategist for social and
religious conservative movements and helped found the "Moral Majority."
_________________
"Dreher
is correct in saying that traditionalist conservatives also have been
conservationists...I think most conservatives should agree that this is
an area we need to think more about."
The
Next Conservatism #39: The Next
Conservatism and "Crunchy Cons", Free Congress Foundation, April 24,
2006
"I
agree with Dreher when he writes, 'we can't build anything good unless
we live by the belief that man does not exist to serve the economy, but
the economy exists to serve man...A society built on consumerism must
break down eventually for the same reason socialism did' "
The
Next Conservatism #39: The Next
Conservatism and "Crunchy Cons", Free Congress Foundation, April 24,
2006
