This Earth Day Celebrate Vladimir Lenin's Birthday!

Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Premier after Joseph Stalin, decided in 1955 that the country should celebrate their national political philosophy, communism. He chose as the day, April 22, Vladimir Lenin's birthday, a tribute to the founder of the Soviet Union. When environmentalists decided that the Earth deserved a day of celebration in 1970, they could have picked any day of the year, as no one knows the exact day date of the Earth's birthday. They chose Lenin's birthday, just as Khrushchev had done. Was this just a coincidence? I think not.

Think of the parallels between Lenin and environmentalists. Lenin once said that, "It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed." Environmentalists second this wholeheartedly when they restrict the ownership and control of private property through the guise of saving the environment. The Endangered Species Act is used voluminously to take the property of anyone if an endangered species is living on it. President Clinton cordoned off thousands upon thousands of acres of land in the form of national parks with the alleged concern of saving the natural resources thereon from development. The federal government now controls nearly forty percent of all land in the continental United States. Lenin's goal was to destroy private property and this goal is obviously shared by environmentalists.

Lenin's political philosophy knew nothing of morality, he once said that, "There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel." Some environmentalists take this to heart as well, placing metal spikes in trees so that when these trees get to lumber mills the spike will ruin the saws and have in some cases injured or even killed mill workers.

Noted environmental genius, former Vice-President Al Gore, said in his book Earth in the Balance (not too melodramatic is it?), "Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment." He doesn't condemn any action by individuals in this pursuit, nor does he at least advocate amending the constitution to make his goals legal. It is this mentality that Lenin was talking about, and that Al Gore encouraged; doing whatever is seen as necessary to gain victory for their cause. At least Lenin had the guts to call it what it was, communism, as opposed to Al Gore and others who claim to be protecting the Earth.

Lenin's birthday is less well known and Lenin's history is shrouded in leftist propaganda, portraying his legacy as one of the many victims of Joseph Stalin. However Lenin's reign of terror was just as deadly as Stalin's and had Lenin not succumbed to death so soon into his rule he surely could have killed just as many as any other madman in the twentieth century.

Environmentalism is merely a politically viable excuse for the government to steal land, ironically in the name of future generations even though those future generations also can't use it or benefit from any of the wealth contained in that land.

If you want to save the planet then get rich liberals like Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Oprah to buy it up and not let anyone use it. But the wholesale violation and destruction of private property rights is the method these people use, not because they are concerned for animals or the environment, but because they hate the rich (even the ones I just mentioned, except perhaps the celebrities) and the capable people of the world who use their reason to change worthless rock and elements into great inventions, food, buildings, and all the things that every environmentalist takes for granted, from the streets they protest on to the clothes they wear.

I'm almost half tempted to advocate eliminating private property around the world for a year so that everyone can see the catastrophe that would set in and the famine that would sweep the planet. Perhaps this would force the environmentalists to acknowledge the lunacy of their irrational hopes. But this would require them to look at reality and then act accordingly, something they have yet to do, so why should they start?

Alexander Marriott is currently a graduate student of the early republic at Clark University in Worcester, MA. He earned his B.A. in history in 2004 from the University of Nevada - Las Vegas, where he was an Op-Ed columnist for the UNLV Rebel Yell. Marriott grew up in Chicago and lived in Saudi Arabia for four and a half years and has resided in Las Vegas since 1996.