Dick Thiel, a retired state wolf biologist, demurred when
asked to speculate on what the late Aldo Leopold might have thought
about the state’s recent wolf hunt. Leopold’s legacy of conservation work is celebrated in the state each year on the first weekend in March.
Thiel, who was one of the speakers at the La Crosse event last weekend, said he didn’t want to “put words in God’s mouth” — a reference to the reputation of Leopold as the wise and philosophical founder of modern wildlife ecology.
Nonetheless, at the end of his talk, Thiel relented and said that Leopold probably would have been OK with the hunt since there are more wolves in Wisconsin now than at any time in a century.
But, he added, Leopold probably would have questioned the way the hunt was structured (by the Legislature as opposed to the professional wildlife managers) and the technology used in the hunt.
This example of reaching back to seek the wisdom of the founders is common, and often associated with questions relating to what the founders of our country were thinking when they wrote the Constitution.
As Thiel demonstrated by his reluctance to speculate, such speculations are fraught with difficulties — technology changes, the world shrinks and science changes how we view the world. Yet we still wonder.
The “what would the founders think?” idea came to me again the day after Thiel’s talk as I was reading Steve Coll’s column about Al Qaeda in the March 4 New Yorker.
Coll, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction books, cited information that Al Qaeda is weakened, but so-called “offspring” groups remain a threat to our country and our interests around the world. He added, though, “These groups lack a demonstrated capacity to strike in Europe or across the Atlantic. Lumping them in with more potent jhadist groups, on scant evidence of their connections is a prescription for ascribing indefinite and elastic war powers to the White House.”
Coll was raising the question of whether the threat justifies a continued formal state of war and the associated war powers claimed by the president.
So what would the founders think? I dusted off my Nook and turned to the Federalist Papers (No. 41) wherein James Madison justifies the need for a standing army and lauds the control over the armed forces by the appropriation power of Congress.
That’s a far cry, of course, from anticipating the ability of a president to rain explosives on faraway places from drones or powerful missiles from submarines, aircraft carrier task forces projecting U.S. power around the world, or the capability for secret Special Forces attacks in foreign lands. Some would argue that exceeds the power the founders intended.
But there is this from Madison: “The means of security can only be regulated by the means and the danger of attack. They will in fact be ever determined by these rules, and by no others. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.”
So although the world has changed dramatically since Madison wrote, his identification of the importance of human passion — fear and desire for self-preservation — has not changed. And that only bolster’s Coll’s argument for an accurate assessment of the threat requiring a state of war.
Madison’s views on the impulse for self-preservation might have some application to wolf management in Wisconsin as well. It might be in vain to resist the public passion for “self-preservation” versus wolves, whether it be regarding the deer herd, livestock interests, dog owners or personal fears of wolves fostered by years of literature and legend.
Leopold knew all about this having dealt with emerging wolf biology and wildlife management in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Leopold, Sigurd Olson and other wildlife ecologists were among those who began to accurately define the role of the wolf in a healthy ecosystem by scientific investigation.
The recovery of wolves after their extirpation in Wisconsin is evidence that the accurate assessment of risk may someday further diminish the impulse for a renewed state of war against wolves.
source
Thiel, who was one of the speakers at the La Crosse event last weekend, said he didn’t want to “put words in God’s mouth” — a reference to the reputation of Leopold as the wise and philosophical founder of modern wildlife ecology.
Nonetheless, at the end of his talk, Thiel relented and said that Leopold probably would have been OK with the hunt since there are more wolves in Wisconsin now than at any time in a century.
But, he added, Leopold probably would have questioned the way the hunt was structured (by the Legislature as opposed to the professional wildlife managers) and the technology used in the hunt.
This example of reaching back to seek the wisdom of the founders is common, and often associated with questions relating to what the founders of our country were thinking when they wrote the Constitution.
As Thiel demonstrated by his reluctance to speculate, such speculations are fraught with difficulties — technology changes, the world shrinks and science changes how we view the world. Yet we still wonder.
The “what would the founders think?” idea came to me again the day after Thiel’s talk as I was reading Steve Coll’s column about Al Qaeda in the March 4 New Yorker.
Coll, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction books, cited information that Al Qaeda is weakened, but so-called “offspring” groups remain a threat to our country and our interests around the world. He added, though, “These groups lack a demonstrated capacity to strike in Europe or across the Atlantic. Lumping them in with more potent jhadist groups, on scant evidence of their connections is a prescription for ascribing indefinite and elastic war powers to the White House.”
Coll was raising the question of whether the threat justifies a continued formal state of war and the associated war powers claimed by the president.
So what would the founders think? I dusted off my Nook and turned to the Federalist Papers (No. 41) wherein James Madison justifies the need for a standing army and lauds the control over the armed forces by the appropriation power of Congress.
That’s a far cry, of course, from anticipating the ability of a president to rain explosives on faraway places from drones or powerful missiles from submarines, aircraft carrier task forces projecting U.S. power around the world, or the capability for secret Special Forces attacks in foreign lands. Some would argue that exceeds the power the founders intended.
But there is this from Madison: “The means of security can only be regulated by the means and the danger of attack. They will in fact be ever determined by these rules, and by no others. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.”
So although the world has changed dramatically since Madison wrote, his identification of the importance of human passion — fear and desire for self-preservation — has not changed. And that only bolster’s Coll’s argument for an accurate assessment of the threat requiring a state of war.
Madison’s views on the impulse for self-preservation might have some application to wolf management in Wisconsin as well. It might be in vain to resist the public passion for “self-preservation” versus wolves, whether it be regarding the deer herd, livestock interests, dog owners or personal fears of wolves fostered by years of literature and legend.
Leopold knew all about this having dealt with emerging wolf biology and wildlife management in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Leopold, Sigurd Olson and other wildlife ecologists were among those who began to accurately define the role of the wolf in a healthy ecosystem by scientific investigation.
The recovery of wolves after their extirpation in Wisconsin is evidence that the accurate assessment of risk may someday further diminish the impulse for a renewed state of war against wolves.
source