As my regular reader (hi Jeff!) will recall, I’m quite fond of the Colorado Politics section called Out West Roundup. On that page, readers can learn about quite a few things happening in the American west that missed the front page. It’s a great way to keep current on key issues here in the west, and I highly recommend it.

That’s not to say the column doesn’t, fairly often, irritate me.

The current edition, for example, we learned that the current rather orange occupant of the White House has, with the stroke of a pen (for our younger readers, a “pen” is something you wrote with on paper, as opposed to using your thumbs on your phone) single-handedly reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, Big Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. 

Now, you may have seen this story and likely read the word “reduced” and not much more. Well, technically, Trump did, in fact, reduce the size of both of these remarkable locations. But what you may well not have read is that he “reduced” them by 90%. 

If you lost, say, 90% of your available food, would you call that just a reduction? How about your blood?  Would you refer to hemorrhaging out 90% of your blood as having “reduced” your blood supply? These actions amounted to taking a meat cleaver to some of the most pristine and historically significant features of the American west. Native Americans left ancient cave dwellings and petroglyphs and to many tribal groups, these are sacred lands.

But they also sit upon likely reserves of oil and gas and other marketable resources, and with the current administration, and the cooperation of the state of Utah’s deep red elected officials, these national monuments are now a tiny fraction of what they once were. Drill, baby, drill, and now!

Oh, and Trump actually did this twice. He did it in his first term, only to have Joe Biden (you remember him? The guy who won the 2020 election?) reverse Trump’s order. Now, Trump version 2 has re-reduced the area of the monuments, explicitly to allow for drilling and mining. Because nothing says “respect for history” like an open pit mine.

And, as an aside (Ed: oh dear…), we all know that over the past few decades, congress has ceded more and more of the power, originally placed with the legislative ranch, to the executive. There are various political science reasons for this. And since I’m a former political science professor, please allow me to drone on, I mean elaborate for a moment. 

There are various theories that try to explain how congress works, or rather these days, how it doesn’t. One theory that seems pretty spot on to me argues that it is in the self-interest of congressional members to not take sides too often on highly controversial issues, as deciding “wrong,” at least according to a chunk of your voters, will cost you votes in your next election. 

So, focus on getting stuff like post offices and bridges for your district, and kick the controversial stuff over to the White House. Both parties have done this, and it is a shame. The Founders unequivocally argued that most power should and would reside in the legislature, and in the House in particular, as it was the body that was closest to the people, and would be most responsive to their desires, given their relatively brief two-year terms (my old buddy Jason Crow is an example of what we could have: an effective legislator, but I digress). 

It appears the Founders were mistaken. 

But isn’t it now, finally, at long last, high time for the legislature to reel back some of these powers? If a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, I’m guessing the national monuments mentioned above will be re-expanded back to their original size. I hope so, but if we put partisanship aside for a moment, we could agree that congress should be more empowered, as the Founders desired? It won’t happen, of course, but it is a serious issue.

Where was I? (Ed: rambling a bit)

The near-elimination of Big Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante brings to mind something I learned about in my youth: the seventh-generation principle. Originating in the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederacy, this principle argues that before any significant decisions are made, the leaders should ponder the implication of their actions on not only the next generation to follow, but all the way out to the seventh generation to come. This idea has stuck with me, and I cannot help but notice the profound shortsightedness of not only our embarrassing president, but also the elected leaders in Utah. They are clearly thinking about themselves, and not even the next generation – let alone the seventh – by essentially destroying a profoundly important historical area to gain access to oil and gas for, well, now.

Imagine, if you will, that, say, a hundred years ago, the decisionmakers of that time decided that certain things were “in the way” of industrial development. Things like salmon, cod, and other now-vital food stocks? They did do their very best to rid us of those pesky buffalo, which were driven very close to extinction. And today only 5% of the Redwood trees that once grew are still standing. Frankly, the reason more plants and animals are not extinct today is more a function of the limited technology of that earlier era, and not a desire to protect the natural world. 

Certainly, back then, and apparently now, no one in power to make these decisions is thinking of the seventh generation. I cannot help but wonder what that distant group of descendants will see when they look around. Will they see only the remains of mining pits and clear-cut lumber? Or might they see what people saw for thousands of years still remaining? Time will tell.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves. 

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.