Fires and government mismagaement

It's hard sometimes --hell, almost always -- to push people out of ideological boxes and try to induce independent thinking. An example can be seen in the comments to this Register editorial on federal land management and the current Southern California Station fire. It's in a national forest, and the point of the argument was that the feds are notoriously poor stewards of the lands they have imperialistically laid claim to in the U.S. This area hadn't had underbrush cleared in at least 40 years, a clear invitation, despite wide acknowledgment that it should be done periodically for the sake of the ecosystem, which is not improved much by being reduced to ashes (though some seeds of some plants do lie dormant until heated by fire, so some fires are natural). But the comments devolved into a discussion of development, an issue on which ideologists have already developed their knee-jerk positions. Is the government a good steward of land? We've never given it much thought and don't care to, thhank you. Ah, well.