Thursday, February 2, 2017

De-Fund Berkeley and Bring Back Logging

Danville, Kentucky -- For several fruitful centuries, the lumber industry was a vital driver of economic prosperity and job growth in the nascent American colonies. When the English settlers landed in the New World, they encountered massive forests full of fresh timber, begging to be logged and used as the raw material for houses, furniture, and sturdy wooden paddles perfect for disciplining an unruly child. The lumber industry was the lifeblood of the newly independent American nation's economy; millions of feet worth of timber were exported each year, providing bountiful profit to industrious loggers and millers while employing thousands of honest Americans. A man could make a dignified living by going out into the woods and communing with nature before harvesting the mighty oak, elm, and pine trees of America's forests.

But somewhere along the line, something went wrong. The sawmills of old were shut down, no longer churning out freshly-hewn logs at their once prolific rate. Many an ax became dull and rusty as it fell into idleness and disuse. The stout lumberjacks of old were forced to leave this once proud industry for other jobs. The sounds of swinging axes and slicing saws in the forests became anachronistic and rare.

Why did the logging industry suffer such a precipitous decline? Some would say overbearing big government regulations. Some would say NAFTA. Some would blame tree-hugging environmentalists, with their shrill shrieking about "deforestation" and "irreversible ecosystem collapse culminating in devastating loss of biodiversity." They all have a point. But the true culprit was much more sinister: college education.

Somewhere around the 1960s, American men went soft. They stopped going out into the woods to appreciate its sights, sounds, and smells: the tarry trickle of sticky maple sap, the sound of wind whispering through leaves, the feel of dirt and bark in one's fingers. They went to college instead. Economists heralded the advent of a "consumer" economy rather than a production-oriented economy.

Look where college education has gotten us, folks.

Kids these days don't make anything with their hands like greater generations of Americans once did. They'll never know the smooth touch of a well-crafted ax in one's fingers, and the feeling of power that toppling a majestic tree brings. College educated snowflake brats don't know what it feels like to make something, to produce something. They only know how to riot and destroy whenever they encounter somebody who disagrees with them.
President Trump is exactly right to demand that our college campuses protect free speech while remaining riot-free. Instead of funding some rebellious urchin's Art History degree, why not put our taxpayer dollars to better use? All that money could be better spent building The Wall, investigating Rafael Cruz, or invading the crime-ridden scum-hole of Chicago.

These days, a college degree isn't worth much. So many kids can't find jobs after graduating college, and find themselves eternally burdened with student loans. We could use big government socialist loan bailouts to fix this problem, as Bernie Sanders has suggested. Or we could teach America's youth a valuable lesson in diligence.

The President should immediately de-fund Berkeley and similarly riotous universities. Instead, this money should be devoted to the logging industry, to encourage timber companies to hire America's youth in their lumber and sawmill operations. Teach America's youth how to produce, rather than teaching them how to riot and destroy. The best way to get America's youth off the streets is to get them back in the forests, harvesting our nation's glorious wooden bounty.