I see the points that you are trying to make, but some of your arguments are poor. First, trying to draw an analogy to the victims of Muslim terrorism was both inaccurate and insulting to those victims. Secondly, the issue is what to do next, and many conservatives are concerned the liberals using this issue to leverage taking more of our rights and freedoms.
The big point around the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is that it needs a tremendous amount of resources to survive. Unfortunately, it needed those resources at a time when the rest of the country needed those resources as well. It lost. There's a lesson there about not becoming too specialized. Filling a niche is nice, but that strategy is a ticket to starvation if the niche could disappear. Teaching people that truth is still more important than saving one species of bird.
That situation is tremendously different from the situation of the victims of Muslim jihadists. They weren't taking any more resources than anyone else was. They were just living their normal lives until they were killed by enemies of our country. The survival lesson in that situation is that we must kill our enemies or force them to surrender before those enemies kill us.
I think it would be great if we bring back the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. I've been bird-watching for a few years, and I'd love to see one. However, I wouldn't make that effort at the expense of property rights. It's easy for people to scream for preservation of something when they aren't the ones who have to make the sacrifice. It's easy when they don't work in an industry that would be impacted by effort. I don't think conservatives are against these animals as much as they are for preserving individual liberty and rights.
I hope that your post won't be your only post to Free Republic. While I found fault with the argument that you made, I appreciate that you brought some interesting and specialized knowledge to our discussion. I think there is a time and place for conservation. I love hiking, bird-watching, kayaking, and other outdoor pursuits. I've spent a great deal of time in our national parks. I think your perspective is a good one to have represented at Free Republic.
Bill
I didn't mean to be flippant about the parallels between the Ivory and human suffering. I am surprised no one called me on it before you.
I do understand that the situations are completely different. Incomparable really. I was only trying to illustrate how illogical and tragic is the theory that adaptability equals right to life. I just wanted the perpetrators of this philosophy to stop and think what that would mean for humans in general. Whether it be the examples I mentioned or on a larger scale. Perhaps an overwhelming number of super human creatures show up and destroy our resources while at the same time hunting us for our scalps. We wouldn't fare well, more than likely. I was just trying to put the analogy in a context that most anyone could get. I mean, if they really believe that if something cannot adapt, it doesn't need to live, they must apply that to themselves or revise their theory a bit. My opinion.
I in no way meant to say or imply that there were any similarities between the bird and say 911 victims other than that they were victims of ambush; differing degrees certainly. I certainly wasn't saying that WTC victims were attacked because of resources they were using. I wasn't saying anything about the cause of the attack. I simply used those examples to try and put this on a human equation for some humans who can't seem to see things in any other terms.
Anyway, I am sorry to those I may have offended. I do not hold animal and human life in equal value.