the human race...thought it was obvious.

Cowlitz -

What I did was lay out in certain terms the fallacy in your argument by applying the EXACT same argument you (or someone taking the same position as you) used to explain why fishing was a right to an example that was purposefully bad (murder).

I will lay it out there again for you one more time:

If it is a right to fish because mankind has been doing it since the dawn of time then it is a right to murder beacause mankind has been doing it since the dawn of time.

A perfect, elegant and clear exposure of the fallacy in your argument...

Mike -

"The existence of community, of society, is not guaranteed. Therefore the means and skills that are required to survive in the absence of society must be preserved."

Extremely well put, I could not agree with you more, for not doing so would certainly Doom us all in the end...Is that a quote from someone else? If so who?

However, you have yet to establish how this truth translates in to cowlitz having the right to fish, yes we bear the responsibility of teaching survival to our children, but does that have to include fishing? Not if we say it doesn't...

I'd just like to revisit something I said above because it was important and I don't think either Mike or Cowlitz addressed it:

As United States citizens we should all feel priveleged to have rights.

God certainly didn't give too many rights to the Chinese when he was passing them out, and I think he might have skimped a little when he was handing out rights to the Jews during WW II. I guess the reason the GGR position bothers me so much is because it epitomizes the arrogance of man. It is the sadness of Manifest Destiny, of the poison Idaho trout streams and the gouge mining of Montana. Its the Hoquiam river, the Kalama river basin and the clearcut in the Black Forest on the Upper Hoh road.

Sorry cowlitz, I appreciate why you feel the way do. Have you ever been to a country where people didn't have the same priveleges as you and I. Ask them if you have the right....