The evisceration or even outright repeal of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the best illustrations of what’s going on in America, today.

The ESA is a socialist policy initiated by Richard Nixon and enacted because of proactive Republican support in the face of considerable Democratic resistance. This exact mirror image of today proves that politics, not ideas, generate American policy.

First, full disclosure: There are few laws as dear to my heart as the ESA . I’d put several other “socialist” laws in the same basket, like the formation of Medicare/Medicaid, CHIPS, the Higher Education Act of 1965 and of course the New Deal’s social security laws.

It’s also dear to my heart because it strengthens the sustainability of earth. But that, believe it or not, is incidental to either why it was passed or why it will be repealed.

There’s no question the ESA reflects socialism. It’s easier for us to say this, today, because words – even ones that we have jealousy coveted or guarded – have all lost their oomph. What’s said is done is often not, and what’s done is often not said. So our ability to use our unique human skill of language to find the road to heaven has been seriously corroded.

But in rare cases like the word, “socialism,” it could work to all our advantage. Losing its oomph means losing its array of false implications as much as anything else. Socialism is neither communism or totalitarianism, but what is today the situation in most of Europe, for example, and very nearly Canada as well.

It means simply ceding control of the powerful to the weak. It means dispersing wealth – sure, you can even say “redistribution” today without fear of getting crucified. In the simplest of explanations it’s a way of moderating a self-serving capitalist economy, particularly when burgeoning populations stress natural resources.

Alas, the ESA. On the face of it, the ESA is antithetical to socialism: Don’t burgeoning populations need more fuel? The extremely aggressive push to repeal the ESA is coming almost exclusively from oil and gas companies. Oil and gas companies have been seriously constrained since Richard Nixon came to power because of the ESA.

So, yes, we need more fuel, but that’s where ESA shows its socialism. We can either greedily get all we need right now and at some point in the future totally collapse; or we can employ what my family at large holiday dinners does when too many friends show up for a feast with not quite enough sweet potatoes to go around: family hold-back.

Moderation comes with all sorts of benefits. It promotes eating rutabaga. The next celebration will be planned better. Most of all by redistributing a little to the all, rather than a lot to the few, the chances for a return invite improve.

Generally everyone agrees that a greater variety of life forms is better than fewer. The science behind this is more complex than just the edification of seeing lots of colors in the garden. The cycle of life is a complex network with each of its millions of strands wrapped around all the others. Pull out a single thread and the pants fall off.

Nixon and conservative support for the ESA was not affirmation that they understood this complexity. Rather, they wanted more colors in the garden. They wanted to save the Bald Eagle, not prop up the avifauna biomass.

And remarkably they were willing to achieve this esoteric goal by restricting oil and gas companies. That’s the key: “restricting” the powerful and greedy. The oil companies in the 1970s were no less infuriated by the ESA than they are today.

ESA isn’t socialistic, per se. It’s the type of moral and reasoned policy that naturally flows out of socialism.

A silver lining in today’s political self-destruction is that we’re all really realizing that ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’ are opportunistic vessels that fill and drain with the moment’s popular opinions. North-South, Nixon-Clinton, Republican-Democratic – there’s no longevity in policy carrying these labels. They are wholly ephemeral.

Conservative, progressive, socialist, communist, capitalist – these are meaningful labels. The ESA was a beneficiary of socialism, like so many other good American laws. It helped the planet, so humankind as a whole is better today than it would have been without it. Are we on the brink of losing this little bit of nobility?