Forward!
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19931993

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Author : Edward Abbey

Preface Author : David Foreman

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If a stranger batters your door down with an ax, threatens your family and
yourself with deadly weapons, and proceeds to loot your home of whatever he
wants, he is committing what is universally recognized — by law and
morality — as a crime. In such a situation the householder has both the
right and the obligation to defend himself, his family, and his property by
whatever means are necessary. This right and this obligation is universally
recognized, justified and even praised by all civilized human communities.
Self-defense against attack is one of the basic laws not only of human
society but of life itself, not only of human life but of all life.

The American wilderness, what little remains, is now undergoing exactly
such an assault. Dave Foreman has summarized the character and scale of the
assault in the first chapter of this excellent and essential book. With
bulldozer, earth mover, chainsaw and dynamite the international timber,
mining and beef industries are invading our public lands — property of
all Americans — bashing their way into our forests, mountains and
rangelands and looting them for everything they can get away with. This for
the sake of short-term profits in the corporate sector and multi-million
dollar annual salaries for the three-piece-suited gangsters (M.B.A.,
Harvard, Yale, University of Tokyo, et alia) who control and manage these
bandit enterprises. Cheered on, naturally, by Time, Newsweek and the Wall
Street Journal, actively encouraged by those jellyfish Government agencies
which are supposed to protect the public lands, and as always aided and
abetted in every way possible by the quisling politicians of our Western
states (such as Babbitt, DeConcini, Goldwater, Hatch, Garn, Symms, Hansen,
Wallop, Domenici — to name but a few) who would sell the graves of their
own mothers if there’s a quick buck in the deal, over or under the table,
what do they care.

Representative democracy in the United States has broken down. Our
legislators do not represent those who elected them but rather the minority
who finance their political campaigns and who control the organs of
communication — the Tee Vee, the newspapers, the billboards, the radio
— that have made politics a game for the rich only. Representative
government in the USA represents money not people and therefore has
forfeited our allegiance and moral support. We owe it nothing but the
taxation it extorts from us under threats of seizure of property, or
prison, or in some cases already, when resisted, a sudden and violent death
by gunfire.

Such is the nature and structure of the industrial megamachine (in Lewis
Mumford’s term) which is now attacking the American wilderness. That
wilderness is our ancestral home, the primordial homeland of all living
creatures including the human, and the present final dwelling place of such
noble beings as the grizzly bear, the mountain lion, the eagle and the
condor, the moose and the elk and the pronghorn antelope, the redwood tree,
the yellowpine, the bristlecone pine, even the aspen, and yes, why not say
it?, the streams, waterfalls, rivers, the very bedrock itself of our hills,
canyons, deserts, mountains.

For many of us, perhaps for most of us, the wilderness is as much our home,
or a lot more so, than the wretched little stucco boxes, plywood
apartments, and wallboard condominiums in which we are mostly confined by
the insatiable demands of an overcrowded and ever-expanding industrial
culture. And if the wilderness is our true home, and if it is threatened
with invasion, pillage and destruction — as it certainly is — then we
have the right to defend that home, as we would our private rooms, by
whatever means are necessary. (An Englishman’s home is his castle; an
American’s home is his favorite fishing stream, his favorite mountain
range, his favorite desert canyon, his favorite swamp or patch of woods or
God-created lake.)

The majority of the American people have demonstrated on every possible
occasion that they support the ideal of wilderness preservation; even our
politicians are forced by popular opinion to pretend to support the idea;
as they have learned, a vote against wilderness is a vote against their own
reelection. We are justified in defending our homes — our private home
and public home — not only by common law and common morality but also by
common belief. We are the majority; they — the greedy and powerful —
are the minority.

How best defend our wilderness home? Well, that is a matter of strategy,
tactics and technique, which is what this little book is about. Dave
Foreman explains the principles of ecological defense in the complete,
compact and conclusive pages of his short introduction. I can think of
nothing I could add nor of anything I would subtract; he says exactly what
needs to be said, no more and no less.

I am happy to endorse the publication of Ecodefense. Never was such a book
so needed, by so many, for such good reason, as here and now. Tomorrow
might well be too late. This is a book that will fit handily in any
saddlebag, in any creel, in any backpack, in any river runner’s ammo can
— and in any picnicker’s picnic basket. No good American should ever go
into the woods again without this book and, for example, a hammer and a few
pounds of 60-penny nails. Spike a few trees now and then whenever you enter
an area condemned to chainsaw massacre by Louisiana Pacific and its
affiliated subsidiary the U.S. Forest Service. You won’t hurt the trees;
they’ll be grateful for the protection; and you may save the forest. My
Aunt Emma back in West Virginia has been enjoying this pleasant exercise
for years. She swears by it. It’s good for the trees, it’s good for the
woods, it’s good for the earth, and it’s good for the human soul.
Spread the word-and carry on!
 

 
Edward Abbey
 July 1984
 Oracle, Arizona
 



     From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org

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     Forward! -- Publication : November 30, 1992

     Forward! -- Added : April 19, 2020

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