Well, here we go again. I guess it is not enough that people in Topanga Canyon are being run out of their homes and businesses for some vague notion of a pristine wilderness area and environmental correctness or that a local park that the citizens of Malibu have invested a lot of time, effort and money in will be lost because unaccountable and irresponsible bureaucrats have arbitrarily decided it is not in the best interests of the locals or the supposed pristine wilderness. Now we have homeowners who will suffer access problems, fire protection and, of course, a drop in property values, and down the line the probable loss of their homes entirely.
Evidently they are now being subjected to a number of alphabet soup government agencies, all oppressive, threatening, coercive and, worst of all, unaccountable for their actions. I doubt there are many people here in Malibu that can afford fines of $27,500 per day. All in the name of a fish that had the good sense to see that when the place they were was not good enough, left for other areas.
But now we have bureaucrats and environmentalists who have decided in their infinite wisdom to restore nature to its perfection regardless of cost or reason and will now supposedly save those fish that are happy elsewhere. But at what cost? It is not only money, property or lifestyle at stake here, it might be lives. If a fire sweeps through that area as it will eventually, a crossing is necessary for fire fighting, and people could be trapped there.
Recently environmental regulations and bureaucrats prevented water from being taken from a river, where a supposed endangered species was, to fight a wildfire near a national park which took the lives of four firemen who got cut off. Will it take something similar here for the people of this community to finally realize what is happening?
Alexis DeToqueville said that the nature of despotism in a democratic state will not to be fierce and cruel, but minute and meddling. A Libertarian knows what the founding fathers would call this treatment of citizens in the Serra Retreat area by the government…tyranny.
It is doubtful that the Democratic Party Liberals in this community will ever learn, no matter how destructive and even lethal their polices become, and that includes the writer of this article. What needs to be learned here is that government is not the answer, it is the problem.
Charles Black
Libertarian Party, Malibu