A compact disc features an interview Ed Abbey did with his friend Jack Loeffler. Two clips are featured on the web:
Jack Loeffler in Conversations with Edward Abbey – El Palacio Magazine
Recorded January 1983
”Some of us are beginning to catch on to something. Government does not exist to ease, facilitate, moderate, and preside over necessary social change. On the contrary, the purpose of government is to prevent change. At all costs. By any means. That is why government reserves to itself the monopoly of coercion, of organized, large-scale violence.”
~ Edward Abbey
Comments
The entire hour long interview can be listed to at or downloaded from:
http://www.loreoftheland.org/audio/ed-abbey-show/
He really hit in on the head with the comments on modern slavery. The American Dream has put shackles on our feet. From the “News” media to corporate logos on everything we see, we must buy into this dream concept or starve. Social pressure, work pressure, even families excert pressure to conform. The “haves” got congress, the muilitary, and the corporations. The “have-nots” must work for them to eat and make them even richer or live on the streets. How could such a wonderful country lose its freedoms and its self? “Conform or be cast out” (Rush from Subdivisions).
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.“ — Edward Abbey
…….and outlive them we shall.
I’ve been doing voluntary conservation work for 40 years, and I keep on. I follow Abbey’s advice.
A film version of The Monkey Wrench Gang is in production and IMDB says that it is scheduled to be released in 2013. Hayduke rides again.
I was given a copy of the Monkey Wrench Gang for my birthday over twenty-five years ago. Even today it sits on a bookshelf within arm’s reach.
Do you suppose the new movie will include the line from Hayduke to the Flagstaff police, “I piss on you from a considerable height…,” and will it be accurate to its time, or updated?
Will Hayduke, in the film, be an Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran, and who will be Hayduke? Big expectations to fill for followers, anything less than an A List actor could be a disappointment. I think Mathew McConnahay would make a decent Hayduke.
Ken Sanders, an old chum of Abbeys has a series of Monkey Wrench T shirts for sale at his book store in Salt Lake(Ken Sanders rare books) I bet if someone wanted one they could do an online search and pick one up via mail. I buy a few at a time, give some away, and then go back when mine wears out and get me more. 15 years ago I used to get attitude from some in Moab, Blanding, Hanksville and Boulder. Now while the myth and the legend lives on in some circles, the man and the mindset are largely forgotten.