Or, in for a penny, in for a pound.

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the federal government has no business in land use regulation, that decisions about what should be built and where must be made at the local level, where people understand their landscapes and have a strong vested interest in doing the right thing. . .

This view is wrong, at least according to Bruce Babbitt and Roger G. Kennedy. In new books, they say the federal government has long played a powerful role in local land use decisions. But its influence has been disguised — as tax deductions for mortgages, as highway programs or as logging concessions.

Both senior officials in the Clinton administration, Mr. Babbitt, former interior secretary, and Mr. Kennedy, who headed the National Park Service, cite different examples and offer different suggestions. Their underlying message, however, is the same.

If development has scarred American landscapes and shredded ecosystems — and it has, Mr. Babbitt and Mr. Kennedy argue — much of the damage has been done with the connivance of the federal government. They say it is time to marshal the federal government's legislative, scientific, financial and even moral resources to solve the problems that are the legacy of these decisions.

What a crock! The incentives are as wrong now as they were then. Politicians are as venal and incompetent now as they were then. And the results will be as faulty now as they were then. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is one definition of insanity.

There has been damage and the correct response is to change the way we manage the issue. Get the federal government out of the picture rather than granting them ever greater control. They not only do a poor job, they displace the locals who have both more expertise and better incentives. It's damaging to society in several ways as well as damaging to the environment.

Things are a mess and the fix won't be quick. We not only have to restore the environment - something that will proceed at Mother Nature's leisure - we have to restore the diminished local work forces that monitor, manage and implement policies.

Mr. Kennedy attributes postwar patterns of American development to two of the 20th century's most notorious top-down thinkers: Hitler and Stalin. Among other things, he writes, Hitler taught Eisenhower the usefulness of autobahns for the quick movement of troops and materiel, and the difficulty of destroying industrial infrastructure if it is well dispersed. And after Stalin got the bomb, Mr. Kennedy goes on, American leaders concluded that the nation would survive thermonuclear war only if its population moved out of the cities and scattered.

There's a more important lesson that old Joe and Adolph taught us; central planning and top down control can't compete with free societies in the long run. They may be able to mount a brief and furious assault, but they are hollow and can't hold their mud for long. The longer they exist the weaker they get because their methods are bunk, self defeating.