In the process, I journeyed from high-tax, collectivist New England to rural Arizona and Nevada, where I learned firsthand about Americans who make their living farming, ranching, mining and cutting timber - or used to, before Washington City decided to drive these hard-working Americans off the land and into poverty and decay, using the absurd and disgusting pretext that these jobs and livelihoods had to be sacrificed to "protect" some obscure bird or weed or bug few people had ever heard of, to please self-satisfied bunny-huggers two thousand miles away.