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Rationality, like Salmon, Threatened with Extinction by Perry Callas Seattle Post-Intelligencer - August 28, 2003

There are two familiar species in danger of extinction in the Pacific Northwest: salmon and rationality. Salmon are going extinct because people with money and political influence are promoting policies that reduce salmon habitat and perpetuate past mistakes, mistakes such as the four lower dams on the Snake River. Rationality is endangered by the oligarchs who now rule our country: tin pot dictators who use the media to create a climate of fear, who use corrupt politicians to subvert the greater public interest and who think the world is their personal playground, to dirty as they wish.

Neither species is expendable. Salmon are the visible face of the place we live, the place from which we draw all sustenance, the only place in the known universe that will have us.

If the salmon die off, it will prove that scientists, environmentalists, fishermen, tourists and others were right to object. But then it will be too late.

Rationality is the hallmark of a democratic society, but there are no new hatcheries being built for rationality. School funding continues to drop, wages fall, jobs disappear and false patriotic fervor now substitutes for common sense.

We who question the Bush administration's ridiculous environmental policies are branded as unpatriotic, and the incredible machine continues to grind up our environment and our liberty.

We must resist this rush to oblivion in order to survive.