Letter: Historical wrongs don’t justify abuse

The off-road vehicle community thinks that if they declare a place worthless, they should be able to ride all over it. They will take “half a dead baby” Solomon style by riding on land that they call “ruined.” A recent example from Mike Hawkins about a dune area in Wonder Valley declares, “There is nothing historic or natural about the rubble that was once a stinking, fly-infested garbage destination at a tangle of non-native salt cedars….” (Feel the love?) His unexamined principle is that once an abuse has occurred, no further protection is warranted.

If we extend Mr. Hawkins’ rule of thumb for dealing with past abuse to other situations, we see that places where toxic chemicals were once dumped should become toxic dumps; our drug-addicted ex-assessor should have remained in office; children who were molested should be handed over to sexual predators; and women who were raped should be forced into prostitution. Fortunately, more cogent Americans want to stop abuse rather than perpetuate it.

The ORV community is demanding a shocking change to county ordinance 3973 that will allow up to 199 ORV drivers per parcel without a permit. They ignore the fact that the ordinance was enacted for one reason — their own bad acting! The ordinance exists today only because ORV drivers behaved badly, continuously committing crimes and disturbing the peace. Property owners worked hard to put laws in place that protect our neighborhoods from ORV abuse today. We will work even harder to keep them in place.

D.S. Wenzel
Twentynine Palms

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Source: http://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2009/12/23/editorial/doc4b31b3da953e8259861727.txt 

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