From: cberlet@igc.apc.org (NLG Civil Liberties Committee)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Re: Wise Use in Northeast (anti-Green)
Date: 13 Dec 92 22:24:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1425500034:cdp:1425500037:000:6559
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet    Dec 13 14:24:00 1992


/* Written  2:12 pm  Dec 13, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
The Scent of Opportunity:
A Survey of the Wise Use/Property Rights 
Movement in New England 

by William Kevin Burke

December 12, 1992

Background of the Wise Use Movement

 Though the national Wise Use movement includes 
groups as diverse as the Farm Bureau and 
organizations for off road motorcycle riders, the 
movement has a consistent style and message. 
These derive from the movement's founders: Ron 
Arnold, Wise Use's intellectual author, and Alan 
Gottlieb, a businessman who has made millions of 
dollars doing direct mail fundraising for a 
variety of right-wing causes. In blunt terms, 
Arnold invented the Wise Use movement and 
Gottlieb provided the mailing lists and 
fundraising capability that let it prosper.

Some national Wise Use observers feel that 
Alliance for America, a coalition of grass roots 
anti-environmental and property rights groups 
formed in the fall of 1991, represents a move by 
Wise Use pioneer Grant Gerber away from Gottlieb 
and Arnold. This may have to do with press 
revelations that Gottlieb served seven months in 
prison for tax evasion and Arnold was a 
registered agent for the American Freedom 
Coalition, an organization that receives almost a 
third of its budget from the Reverend Sun Myung 
Moon's Unification Church. 

Arnold was once an organizer for the Sierra Club. 
A profile in Outside magazine credited him with 
organizing teaching expeditions that helped 
create the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area in 
western Washington state in 1976. Arnold's big 
career break coincided with the coming of the 
Reagan Presidency and Arnold's own rapid swing to 
the right. In 1981 he coauthored At the Eye of 
the Storm, a biography of James Watt that the 
former Secretary of the Interior not only 
authorized, but also helped edit. As Watt's 
anti-environmental "Sage Brush Rebellion" petered 
out and the public embraced the environmental 
movement in the mid to late 1980s, Arnold formed 
an association with Alan Gottlieb. Together they 
forged dozens of widely scattered groups--groups 
whose main bond was that they felt threatened by 
environmental protection and the rise of the 
environmental movement--into the Wise Use 
anti-environmental movement.

Ron Arnold took the Wise Use movement's name from 
the works of Gifford Pinchot, first head of the 
U.S. Forest Service. He has said he chose the 
phrase because it is catchy and uses only nine 
spaces in a newspaper headline. Arnold was also 
pleased with the ambiguity of the phrase. 
"Symbols register most powerfully in the 
subconscious when they are not perfectly clear," 
he told Outside. Arnold told the same reporter 
that "facts don't matter," essentially admitting 
that he is willing to lie or manipulate 
information to achieve his goals, a tactic the 
Wise Use movement employs regularly.

Gottlieb's Center for Defense of Free Enterprise 
reportedly takes in about $5 million per year 
through direct mail and telephone fundraising for 
a variety of right-wing causes. Gottlieb seems to 
possess a genius for dancing along the edge of 
legal business practices. He purchased the 
building that houses CDFE's headquarters with 
money from two of his own non-profit foundations, 
then transferred the building's title to his own 
name so he could charge his foundations over 
eight thousand dollars per month rent. Then there 
was his conviction for tax fraud. But even jail 
did not hurt his business. In Gottlieb's own 
ultraconservative circles, tax evasion seems to 
be a badge of honor.

At present the Wise Use movement is a very loose 
coalition. It includes mining companies anxious 
to preserve a 120-year-old statute that allows 
mining companies to purchase federal lands for 
$2.50 to $5.00 per acre; manufacturers of Off 
Road Vehicles (ORV's) eager to promote the use of 
their products on public lands; ranchers fearful 
of losing their federally subsidized grazing 
permits; and developers, small businessmen, and 
landowners frightened by John Birch Society 
claims that the federal government is out to grab 
their land. This last group dominates the New 
England property rights movement.

The John Birch Society envisions a world run by 
secret elites whom Birchers call the "Insiders." 
According to Birch lore, government regulations 
are part of a larger Insider scheme to create a 
socialist "One World Government" that will deny 
individual and property rights and lead to a 
global collectivized society. Many Birch 
activists are also part of the right wing of 
religious fundamentalism, and pursue their 
anti-modernist theological and political goals 
with equal zeal.

In 1988 the first large gathering of Wise Use 
advocates in Reno, Nevada, led to the 
publication, by Alan Gottlieb, of Ron Arnold's 
book, The Wise Use Agenda, which outlines their 
movement's goals and aims. Few environmentalists 
would find fault with the spirit behind this 
quote from The Wise Use Agenda: "[Wise Uses's 
founders] felt that industrial development can be 
directed in ways that enhance the Earth, not 
destroy it." But the agenda itself is basically a 
wish list for the extractive industries. The Wise 
Use movement seeks the opening of all federal 
wilderness lands to logging, mining, and the 
driving of ORV's. Despite much rhetoric about 
seeking ecological balance and "environmental 
solutions," almost the only environmental problem 
the Agenda addresses, rather than dismisses, is 
the threat of global warming from the buildup of 
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The solution 
proposed is the immediate clear cutting of the 
small portion of old growth left in the United 
States so those lands may be replanted with young 
trees that will absorb more carbon dioxide. 

The combination of deception, hysteria, and 
demagoguery that has brought wealth and fame to 
Arnold and Gottlieb has found fertile soil in New 
England. Backed by groups ranging from the John 
Birch Society to the Farm Bureau, the Wise Use 
movement has won a few significant political 
victories. Sadly, these victories have often 
resulted not from open honest discussion of 
controversial issues but from misinformation and 
scare tactics. Wherever it appears, the Wise Use 
movement depends on promoting people's fears for 
their land and future. It exploits the fact that 
most people just do not know much about the 
complex intricacies of federal and local 
environmental programs, government regulations, 
and land use planning in general.


            
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