But, perhaps they are right. As the Chief Executive of the great Agricultural Complex of Corn marching to yon horizon or multi-injected beef “finishing” on their dirt mounds, the President should be happy to support a combine or two on the front greensward, perhaps 13 tons of erosion a year into the Potomac and maybe a crop duster or two buzzing the garden and hazarding a Stinger Missile response from the Department of Hapless Security.

No doubt CropLife’s Corporate Manual has a detailed section on how “Green” they are and it likely reads almost as full of comic relief as their letter.

By the way, in this latter vein, I didn’t include some subsequent lines in Henry Lester’s essay that will resonate in particular with Caleb Stegall:

“A man’s education must not be measured by the years of common school attendance, the length of his academic course, or the size of his college diploma [!!]. The two first are useful when young to give him an introduction to a habit, a desire to learn in his leisure moments that may grow with his growth and strengthen with his strength until mature in years he will be found to possess much useful knowledge. It is folly to suppose that a few years at our institutions of learning alone will make a man deeply read [AMEN!]. The collegiate course is almost sure to spoil a man for an agriculturalist, a merchant, any useful mechanical trade or profession that requires manual labor. Six years of youth spent, and one-half that is studied that will never be in the least beneficial or practical for use. In these six years, he will have contracted the habit of idleness, of a superiority to others not pursuing the same course, and practically reversing the order laid down by the God of nature who said that the day was made for labor, the night for repose.”

Considering how our “busy” lives are spent today, from youth to senescence, one is tempted to say that we have gotten dumber as a people as we have gotten more “schooled.” Dumb enough that many would buy the arguments of the “CropLife” gang…

This seems like a dubious claim. Most Americans have a significant amount of time they choose to spend on various things – such as watching television for an hour or two a day.