Beware the Libertarians Hiding in Public Lands Op-Eds
The think tank operatives whose job is to make gutting your public lands sound reasonable.
If you love public lands, there’s a certain kind of article you need to learn to recognize on sight. It runs in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and once it’s worn out the marquee names it filters down into the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek and even Outside, the once-venerable outdoor magazine that’s supposed to be on your side.
It’s written in a calm, reasonable, grown-up voice. It concedes that our public lands are in trouble, and then it kindly offers to help. And down at the bottom, in the italicized author bio that almost nobody reads, sits the tell. This week’s version ran in the Washington Post and the tell reads: “Shawn Regan is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.”
That single line is the thread, and if you pull on it the whole thing unravels into something much bigger than one man's column. What you're looking at is one small, well-mannered front of a decades-long campaign, bankrolled by fo…
