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From Wikipedia.org

Teddy Roosevelt

Conservationist

In a speech that TR gave at Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910, he outlined his views on conservation of the lands of the United States:

— "Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.
— Moreover, I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few, and here again is another case in which I am accused of taking a revolutionary attitude. People forget now that one hundred years ago there were public men of good character who advocated the nation selling its public lands in great quantities, so that the nation could get the most money out of it, and giving it to the men who could cultivate it for their own uses. We took the proper democratic ground that the land should be granted in small sections to the men who were actually to till it and live on it. Now, with the water-power, with the forests, with the mines, we are brought face to face with the fact that there are many people who will go with us in conserving the resources only if they are to be allowed to exploit them for their benefit. That is the one of the fundamental reasons why the special interests should be driven out of politics.
— Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear most important part."[citation not included for purposes of, and clarifying within, the outermost vis-a-vis respect and regard to...ahhhhh...brevity.]

And, one might say, it makes me think about the biggest industry blocks in history (at the time) that Teddy broke up, or at least what that anti-trust debacle eluded to that may or may not exactly be relevant today, or had been for our parents, and our grandparents also under the industries weight in lobby; and will be again relevant to our children unless we've given over to some consensus on what reasonable amount of hard earned dollars should be spent on weapons of war, legions of bureaucracy, advertising and media, and less and less on the grassroots our tax dollars were meant to nourish. Given the wakefulness and duty we've had to shoulder in our own lives, it seems too taxing to toy with; balderdash, we say, I'll go my own way.

But, in the end, our history somehow boils into: we've been here together, we're here together now, and one day we'll all be gone together, and the rest is up to us.

If you're liberal, be liberal, and think like a forest instead of a tree. If you're conservative, be conservative and think like the shepherd who makes his staff from the tree. But for all of our sakes, just don't let anyone else tell you what "being conservative" means AT ALL, otherwise you risk acting like a buffoon, duped into the con-game of misinformation and while you're saying one thing, the people you vote for will actually be doing another thing. Be a democracy and do the things that democracy does. Run forests, run.