Tuesday, August 25, 2009

EBA vs. WFB, Jr.: "This is the reason America will never get anywhere."

When he was but a prince, The King of Funny Faces asked William F. Buckley, Jr. a question when he came to speak at West Chester University, April 1996:  "What is your stand on the "Timber Salvage Rider?"

The father of modern conservatism rolled his eyes, and a room full of two-hundred rich white people with nice watches and BMW's shouted at the King of Funny Faces. They screamed "Go home!" "Why don't you get out of here!" and worse. The King was scared.

When William F. Buckley, Jr. spoke, he said, "The world is a giant ashtray we put things into..." and then gestured as if to extinguish as cigarette out on the podium.

2.2.208-222 - What do you read my lord - words, words, words - for yourself, sir, shall grow as old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward
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Then he said something about, "I question the juvenile nature of people who treat all animals as pets," but the Timber Salvage Rider wasn't about animals, it was about trees.

no respect at Buckley speech
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That summer, the King of Funny Faces spent two weeks (one in June and one in July) aggressively lobbying over 200 Congressional offices to repeal the Timber Salvage Rider with a group of activists from all over the country (mostly the Pacific Northwest) led by Former Congressman Jim Jontz of Indiana. The head of the Forest Service gave the King of Funny Faces a dirty look at a Congressional hearing at which only one dissenting voice against the Timber Salvage Rider spoke, and he sat right next to the Secretary of Agriculture in his conference room in the Department of Agriculture Building.

It was a good time, but it was bittersweet. Not only did the King of Funny Faces find out that his cat died on the last day of his first trip to D.C. We ended up losing the vote by the closest margin possible, two votes! The final tally was 211-209. It was a very sad time for us, and for the trees and wildlife that depend on the trees in areas that now look like this.

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