Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

.. 'Ecumenicism, No!' Ul 8. : .... '" Ol Response to "'n Defense of Freedom" by J.G. KrolVol. IX No: 31 Page 49 .' ~ w Z W ..J t.l > t.l .'" -- PART III In the preceding issues, we discussed the events leading to President Nixon's now infamous Executive Order 11644, the Presidential Proclamation governing the use of off-road vehicles on 'public lands. Last week, we reprin ted letters between myself and Mr. John Whitaker, Deputy Assistant to the President. Mr. Whitaker's letter said in essence, "Try it, you'll like it." Well, I don't have to try it to know that I don't like it! In my fITst letter to Mr. Whitaker, I requested merely that the Presiden t issue a follow-up directive to the various land-use agencies stating that they should approaCh the implementation of Execu tive Order 11644 in a positive manner. He replied that such action wasn't necessary because lIeveryone" would interpret the directive in that manner. Let's examine a few of the recent hearings: 1. Hearings held during February and March in Glenn County to discuss the re-classification of 37,000 acres of public land at Snow Mountain as Wilderness, excluding all vehicular travel. 2. During March, the USFS requested comments to a proposal to prohibit vehicular travel in an undetennined number of acres of the McKinstry Meadows Management Unit. 3. On March 13th, the US Forest Service conducted five separate hearings to detennine the furture management of National Forest lands in the Lake Tahoe Basin. 4. The US Forest Service conducted. hearings during May for the purpose of excluding off-road vehicles from 18,800 acres of the Tahoe National Forest in the Grouse Lakes area. Although the ORV enthusiasts dominated these hearings, the USFS closed the area anyway. 5. During May the US Forest Service conducted six public hearings throughout Califomia to discuss the designation of 120 undeveloped areas coveri1!g some 3 million acres of National Forest as "roadlcss Areas" which woul" prohibit all types of vehicular travel. Of those who attended the hearings and wrote letters, almost 70 percent opposed the "Roadless Area" classification. It will be interesting to see the final results of these hearings. 6. The BLM is conducting hearings for the use of 150,000 acres of public land in Colusa, Lake, Napa and Yolo Counties. The proposals for this area include vehicular restrictions and prohibitions. 7. The Bureau of Outdoor Recreation recently conducted 10 hearings in major population centers th.-oughout the United States for the purpose of detennining the public's needs for outdoor recreation. Prime among these discussions were references to the restriction of off-road vehicles pursuan t to Executive Order 11644. 8. The BLM conducted a hearing at Taft, California during June to discuss the prohibition and restriction of (Please tum to pg. 53) By Charles Clayton Among the leading thinkers and doers of the motorcycle movement lately there has been a rise in what Ron Schneiders calls "Ecumenicism,"'crying for a joining together or unanimity of opinion with which to face the forces that threaten our pursuits. J.G. Krol's is the most eloquent statement of the ecumenicist position and deserves to be debated in print, not only for the edification-of those who've already decided this basic issue for themselves, but also for those who haven't made up their minds. I ,happen to agree wholeheartedly with the main point of Mr. Krol's editorial, that motorcycling can. be well served by supporting a government agency that advances the interests of our pursuit, and his secondary point that we should oppose government interference beyond a point. But I take issue with the contention that motorcycle enthusiasts as a whole should agree on exactly where the point has to be. Extending J.G.'s tug-of·war metaphor, a single man with a block and tackle can defeat the pull of a thousand men, even if they are all dragging in the same direction. If you took a poll in the United States today, you would probably not be surprised to find that a majority of the people either have no use for motorcycles or actively dislike them. Even among those who ride and the industry which sells motorcycles today, not everyone believes in them. Controversy brings this out. Take helmet laws for example. A lot of us feel that motorcycle riding is normally so dangerous that one is a fool not to wear a certain hat. Others of us don't feel foolish at all and in fact seem to be quite safe even without maximum protective clothing. I happen to side with the latter group, although I wouldn't deny the nervous ones from wearing whatever gives them peace of mind. Ecology is another exemplary controversy. Depending on our individual experience, we either believe that motorcycles are harmful to the ecology, or not, or else something in between. The strongest version of reality shall prevail. But how can all of us agree, now, at exactly what point on the wise/foolish or innocent/culpable scale that motorcycling is? Not yet. By the time that is accomplished, through lengthy trial, error and observation, there will be new controversies to disperse us. I wouldn't challenge J.G. Krol to equal space, since he makes so much better use of it than I, so let me conclude my arguments for the time being with some unsupported declaration: 1.) Motorcycle riding is an act of faith. 2.) The more levers you apply to a burden, the easier it is lifted. 3.) Cycle News is a block and tackle that anyone can use. 4.) Faith is fun, if you can dig it. 5.) The majority is wrong in many cases. 6.) What motorcycling may lose in efficiency, it makes up for in participation. 7.) Our strength is in individuality, not in commonality. " DEfENSE Of fREEDOM :The Government Game: How to Play It " • By J. G. Krol There are two kinds of businessmen in the world, just as there have always been. The first kind believes that if he leaves government alone, it will leave him alone. The second kind believes that the only road to long-run successes, and even survival, is to gain influence with or, better, actual power over govemment, so he can tum it to his own ends. More basically, the first kind of businessman believes that just as he minds his own business without intruding on anyone else, government will mind its own business. But the second kind of businessman finnly believes that the main, if not the only, business of government is minding other peoples' business. Now this would be a trivial philosphical quibble, were it not for one fact of the greatest significance. When we look at small, struggling, fragmented, marginal, failing businesses we fmd prevailing among them the first attitude. When we examine large, huge, immensely profitable and successful businesses, we find the second attitude overwhelminglY'dominant among them. If we regard economic evolution with the same detached scientific objectivity we apply to genetic evolu tion, it is obvious which ideological species of businessman is more viable. The one species of businessman is fully aware that he is playing, ,,!,d will always be playing, a game of raw power in which government is the queen, the most powerful piece on the board. Realizing that he cannot avoid playing this game, he plays, if not to win, at least to draw and hold his own. But the other species of businessman doesn't even know the game is being played. As a result, his move are random and uncoordinated, and' may hurt his position more than help it. Worse, he doesn't even recognize that they are ·moves. A trout and an angler are both players in the game called "fishing", but the latter knows that and the fonner doesn't, so it is hardly surprising that after eons of play the 'score should stand at Folks: several trillion, Fishes: a few thousand ...and less than that if you don't count sharks as fishes. .ot cou':§e it c'\,f\ be objected that the Government Game couldn't even exist if everybody understood what was going on; the players would simply agree, by mutual consent, to abolish the Game as a waste of their time and effort. While that will very likely be the final outcome in some unimaginably distant future world, the problem for today is that the motorcycle industry is pervaded by -the attitude that it is possible to "get along with" government in some passive, co.operative sense, and that if motorcycling does as it is told and plays along, then it will somehow manage to get along. If I didn't .care about the future of motorcycling, I wouldn't care about the motorcycle industry, and would watch its demise with the same impartiality as Alfred Capus, who said, "Fools have always been exploited, and that's as it should be. The day they ceased being exploited, they would triumph, and the world would be wrecked." But I do care about the future of the sport and, because of that, fervently hope the industry will set aside its naive foolishness and innocence, acknowledge that it is and always will be a contestant in the Government Game, and play accordingly. One of the most basic rules of the Game is QUID PRO QUO, literally; one thing for another; more practically: never give .outbin' fer nuthin' ...never give up anything unless you get something in return. The fact that the phrase is Latin is some indication how long the Game has been played. The novice player, just after he discovers that he is a player, will try to apply this by rummaging through his rule possessions, hoping to find something he thinks the government might want. The expert player will more skillfully try to accumulate those things that the government has told him it wants, but this has its limitations since the government is not stupid and it often feigns in terest in and kicks the tires of the Mercury station wagon, while secretly lusting for the yellow Chevy convert. The Master player, therefore, closely studies the Rovernment in general, and the bunch he deals wi th in particular, in order to assay what it really wants. This is what the motorcysle industry should be doing. It is interesting to note, though of little concern to us here, that the handful of Grandmasters of the Game actually probe at the foundations of government, arranging to gain control over those commodities which the government must have. Grandmasters are playing to become the govemmen t themselves. N ow quid pro quo is a law of logic and nature, and' cannot be evaded any more than the law of gravity. The only thing in question is: which quid for what quo? So far, through the plays of special driver's licenses, and spark arresters, and quiet mufflers, and standardized controls, and mandatory helmets, and mandatory goggles, and mandatory lights-on, and "safety" reflectors, and non-ape-hanger handlebars, and mandatory fron t brakes, and passenger hand-grips, and land closures, and limitations on chassis alterationsooJn short, in nearly every move in the game that has so far been madeoo.the motorcycle industry has given up scores of quids and got in return not one lousy quo. Not even half-a-quo. Again and again the cry has been: if only we do this, then they'll leave us alone. Of course, they never do, for the v.ery simple reason that they can't. The main business of government is minding other peoples' business, and if it doesn't do that, why, it will just dry up and blow away. The government cannot give future non~intervention in exchange for present compliance with its demands, for if it did, it would cease to be a government. The motorcycle industry should be asking itself two questions vis-a-vis government: What do they want that we have or can gain control of? What do they have that we want? So far, the industry has answered these questions unconsciously and implicitly with: Our docile compliance wi th their every curren t wbim. And: Their guarantee of future non·intervention. If this exchange worked, it would be a pretty rotten bargain. But it can't even work! A case in poin t is the elaborate advertising series presently being run by the American Motorcycle Association, spokesman for the entire motorcycle industry, in which motorcyclists are urged to sign it petition in support of your President's executive order on land-use. This illustrates one of the things for which governments have an insatiable hunger: mass support, public support, grass-roots enthusiasm, a surge of favorable public opinion. If money is the mother's-milk of politics, then grass-roots support is surely its Pablum. So we give a display of grass-roots support. What do we get in return? Frankly, it's a mystery to me. I would sincerely hope that the industry pulled off a good bargain, getting some significant quid for the quo of a fusillade of supporting signatures. If the industry did make such a deal, it would be an unthinkable tactical blunder to fail to say so in those fancy double-eagle ads, for only by showing motorcyclists what they were getting in return for their signatures would the desired flurry of support be fully developed. Yet the ads give no indication of the benefits motorcyclists will receive from their show of support SO barring that unthinkable tactical blunder - we are forced to assume they're getting nothing more than the usual delusory promise of fu ture non·intervention, a promise any government will make to anybody foolish enough to swallow it, but which it has not the sligh test in ten tion of keeping, and which it couldn't keep even if it wanted to. We are ineluctably driven to the conclllsion that the best thing that could happen to the AMA's petition-campaign would be for it to faII flat on its face provided - I say, provided - that the reasons for its failure an: made "perfectly clear" to the intended recipient of the petitions, namely, the millions of motorcyclists would be overjoyed to support their President, if only they could obtain some tangible benefit in return. Motorcyclists want so little, compared to the big.league pressure-groups, that any Presiden t could fulfill their fondest dreams with a single snap of his fmgers ...and if he did, he would buy their undying gratitude and loyalty. There are many things the govemment wants that motorcycling (Please turn to pg. 52)

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