No doubt you have heard how the National Park Service tried to close off the World War II memorial on the National Mall. I say tried because these veterans and their families simply removed the barricades. Some of them even carried them to the south lawn of the White House in protest.

What I didn’t know was what the National Park Service was doing around the country. A recent column by Mark Steyn was a revelation. The Park Service demanded that privately run sites such as the Claude Moore Colonial Farm and privately owned sites such as Mount Vernon be closed down. He writes that when the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway declined to comply with the government’s order to close, the Park Service sent armed agents and vehicles to blockade the hotel’s driveway.

Some of this country’s scenic wonders may sit on National Park Service land, but they are visible from some distance. Tourists, for example, can see Mount Rushmore in South Dakota from outside the boundaries of the park. Well, the National Park Service can’t have that. So the rangers attempted to close down a stretch of highway where you can see the stone images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Mark Steyn tells the most extraordinary story of what happened at Yellowstone Park. A group of foreign tourists were pulled over photographing a herd of bison when an armed ranger informed them that taking photographs counts as illegal “recreation.” They were ordered back to the Old Faithful Inn, which is next to the geyser of the same name. They were forbidden to leave the inn to look at that geyser. And every hour and a half, a fleet of Park Service SUVs showed up ten minutes before Old Faithful was ready to blow so that rangers could surround the geyser and block its view.

We are told these parks are public places for all of us to enjoy. The shutdown illustrates the mindset of the Park Service that thinks they can control it anyway they wish. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.