CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- With all due respect to Sen. Robert Byrd, he is wrong.

The senator's commentary can be boiled down to the offering of advice to West Virginians to shut up and allow a federal agency to take our freedom and make our country and state less secure and prosperous.

The Environmental Protection Agency is manipulating the interpretation of law to deny a legitimate enterprise from conducting business, while at the same time causing our country to lose its largest and best energy source, cause a massive increase in the cost of energy and every product that requires energy to be produced, and sacrifice the livelihood of those that are employed or have equity in the mining business.

Coal is important to our country! Coal is important to West Virginia! Quietly allowing an administration that West Virginians recognized for what it is at the ballot box in 2008 to cause harm to our way of life cannot and will not happen. West Virginians are not built that way. We will give our opinion and negotiate with reasonable people, but when "punched in the gut," we will react fiercely and we won't relent. We will not stand idle while a legitimate enterprise that employs West Virginians is targeted for destruction.

I believe that West Virginians want clean water and clean air. I assume that that was the intent of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. From what I can tell about the recent actions of the EPA, their goal is not clean air or clean water. What the EPA desires to accomplish is to assure that mayflies don't have to search for acceptable streams to establish a habitat and eliminate the emission of a gas into the atmosphere that each of us emits by breathing every second.

Clean air, and water and coal mining go hand in hand. The industry is better than it has ever been and working daily to get better. The EPA, however, won't be satisfied until coal mining has been eliminated and another segment of our economy comes under government control.

A free market has determined the best source of energy, and our country has prospered. Ask yourself just how much prosperity occurs when the government attempts to accomplish what should be market choices.

Don't let our freedom diminish. Visit your elected representatives and tell them the truth about you see happening. Only Rep. Shelley Capito has vigorously defended our way of life. Byrd's recent comments show his opinion. Sen. Jay Rockefeller has never developed affection for coal unless it helped him get elected, and Reps. Nick Rahall and Alan Mollohan advocated cap-and-trade legislation for months before deciding on the last day prior to a congressional vote that it would pass without them and they could vote against to gain electoral advantage.

Write them, e-mail them, go where they are and give them a piece of your mind. Vote for others who believe in freedom and the free market. Continue to make your voice heard. Go to rallies, write to the paper, demonstrate at events that represent the taking of our freedom.

We are Americans and West Virginians. We have fought and won freedom before. It is time to fight for freedom again.

Gearheart, of Bluefield, is a Republican candidate for Congress in West Virginia's 3rd District.