Lefties in the Pacific Northwest are befuddled that individual philanthropists could protect the enviornment and engandered species. From the Seattle P.I:

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has attracted some liberal support for his strong anti-war position and other pieces of his libertarian platform. But his views on environmental regulation — while consistent with his argument for a limited federal government — are not likely to win much applause from the left.

At Seattle University Friday, Paul was asked how to “get control” of the Endangered Species Act. He said:

“I’ve been reading the Constitution now and then. I can’t find endangered species written in the Constitution and I don’t think that’s a federal function. But that doesn’t mean that if we’re not for the Endangered Species Act we shouldn’t be interested in protecting species. We should be doing it in a private sort of way. Sometimes … if there’s an endangered species you say ‘Well, I’m going to raise a few of those endangered species.’ I think you go to jail for some of that. So it literally hinders what the goals are.
“It’s the bureaucratic approach versus the free market approach. There is so much wealth in this country, there are a few billionaires around and many of them are interested in these subjects and there’s no reason why with the land they own and buy and control, that they wouldn’t be interested in these things.”

Paul said he does not buy “this idea that that if we don’t support the government’s approach — the bureaucratic, authoritarian, thuggish, approach — then we don’t care.”

“I’m actually a believer that if it were left to he marketplace … that private property owners could do a better job than what we do through federal regulations.”

While the Ron Paul 2008 Liberal Outreach Program is working wonders on the issue of war and peace, they’ve got a while to go on the economic and enviornmental fronts. Perhaps more sites like this one could convince liberals, which points out that the world’s most polluted places are (or were at one time) socialist backwaters.