Posted on 06/23/2008 12:04:19 AM PDT by TheConservativeCitizen
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” —-C.S. Lewis
If the government gets into the business of regulating and controlling carbon emissions it will be an unparallel concentration of power far exceeding the New Deal under Roosevelt. The government will be in complete control over what businesses and average citizens consume and produce. It is the gateway excuse to rule, regulate and control your daily life in a fashion that we have never tolerated before but are now expected to meekly accept as we attempt to bailout the bathtub with a teaspoon. Never have Americans been so willing to hand over the most fundamental financial, transportation and quality of life decisions over to a central authority on such questionable grounds.
We have been so brainwashed that climate change is mainly caused by human activity and that somehow carbon taxes, economic socialism, monitoring lawn mower emissions, criticizing cow flatulence and flailing away at the faceless evil that is “oil” will somehow make a difference in climate changes we are only barely beginning to understand, let alone significantly influence one way or another.
(Excerpt) Read more at constitutionclub.wordpress.com ...
Strong words. In principle I agree with the quotation of C.S.Lewis - Mao, Pol Pot, Ceaucescu, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and others all had ‘the good of the citizen’ as their permanent pet project, and paradoxically that cost hundreds of millions of innocent people their lives.
On the second part, I am not so sure. Yes, we may be in the process of accepting many new rulings and decisions, and a lot of these seem to be silly to this Dutchman too. But, logic tells me that if we do nothing and climate characteristics DO change for the bad in out own lifetime, so bad that the bare necessities of life are endangered, then we will be endlessly unforgiving towards ourselves, and grieving about having done nothing. We won’t be mentally able to see our own children suffering from famine. And we will be praying to God to forgive us for having been so addicted to our own wealth and desire that we did not what was in our power to avert all that trouble for the future generations.
Respectfully submitted, A13.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” —-C.S. Lewis
Clever bloke C.S. Lewis. Another like him is desperately needed.
Unfortunately McCain is a bigger Enviro-Wacko than Obama even if he isn’t a Marxist.
The sad reality is that most people like to play Gestapo when they are ones in charge.
Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy (of political correctness and its defiance to rational behavior and independent thought)."
From George Orwell's "1984"
Global warming is a complete and total scientific fraud. The idea that man can change the climate of the earth is a sign of massive hubris and insanity.
As apt a description of the present day liberal Democrat party as was ever made. I've got to read that book again. Orwell was only a couple of decades or three off.
Proceed through an intersection as a yellow light suddenly appears and changes into the red? It will cost you 130.00 dollars.
Try to escape the camera's flash by accelerating above 43 MPH through the intersection, and you receive an additional 100 dollar fine.
Add in the additional standard 35.00 service fine, and you have a grand total of $265.00 in fines for proceeding through an intersection as the light suddenly changed from yellow to red.
If you don't pay the fines, your credit score will be destroyed by The Company that owns the traffic camera system.
In the end, I am just another number to The Government that threatens and intimidates livelihood if I don't give them my cash.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/06/no_traffic_cameras_given_new_b.html
http://blog.nola.com/news_impact/2008/06/CAMERAS061908.pdf
There is tons of scientific data to prove that a volcanic eruption causes more pollution in a 48 hour period than several years worth of auto emissions.
For example:
"The 1991 eruption of Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines was one of the largest in the past 100 years. The injection into the stratosphere of 14-26 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide led to a global surface cooling of 0.5°C a year after the eruption.
The climatic impact of the Pinatubo aerosol was stronger than the warming effects of either El Niño or human-induced greenhouse gas changes during 1991-93."
http://www.dar.csiro.au/publications/greenhouse_2000e.htm
Seriously these people are the most ignorant fools imaginable. They make their proclamations and expect people to just fall in line, and many will. but there is something the long hairs are forgetting. A Thousand throats can be cut in a single night by a running man.
Sorry, but I don’t see any connection between my comments and the Candidate President Obama. My precise point is: one can accept, out of cautionessness, new rulings and laws, even if they seem to be silly, or limiting. If things do go wrong nonetheless, then one at least can find a tiny bit ease of mind in the thought that one tried something.
If things work out wrong and one looks back and then wonders: ‘what if I/we...’, one is in a sad spot indeed.
I am not a man of conspiracy theories, so I don’t really connect the environmental issue with upcoming fascism. To me, the current obsessions in the West regarding invading peoples privacy with all kinds of ‘taps’, ‘personal profiling’, identification scaremongering, and invading peoples houses randomly with SWAT-teams because there might be a 0.0000001% chance that 0.0000001% gramme of cannabis is located somewhere... now THAT scares me, because these tactics remind me of a certain man, a failed painter, with a tiny moustache, sometime in the past, somewhere.
Respectfully submitted, A13.
“if we do nothing “
“then we will be endlessly unforgiving”
“We won’t be mentally able”
“And we will be praying”
“we did not what was in our power to avert”
Until then, this may help:
Of course not. I am an Obama skeptic, for as long as I do not know what exactly he stands for. And I am very weary of his ‘Bono-like’ attractiveness to all kinds of young folks the world over, who are very naive in my opinion. I did not foresee, by the way, that my way of phrasing could remind some people here of Obama’s rhetoric. So it was unintentional.
What I do know factually, however, that this world of ours simply won’t be able to cope with the demand for energy and all kinds of emissions and waste, once giant countries like China and India will have reached the same level of use of natural resources that the West currently has. The laws of the free market dictate that prices will soar and soar, and the lifestyle of Joe Average will undergo a sharp decline in quality.
So we will only make progress by judicious talks, compromises, and some sort of honest distribution. How, and when, I do not know. But the only other options, in my view, are Energy Wars and possibly even new kinds of dictatorships based on need/greed for energy sources.
Respectfully submitted, A13.
Coming Fascist State? What do you mean by "coming"? Seems to me that when more & more government agencies can break down anyone's door with a "no-knock" warrant and shoot to kill before any trial of innocence or guilt, that we are already in fascist state. The rights that were given away in the senseless War on Drugs are being used by more and more government agencies every day. The justification is always the same - those with power know best.You're confusing totalitarian with fascist. Fascism is a kind of totalitarianism but it has a *very* different ideology than homegrown American totalitarianism.The sad reality is that most people like to play Gestapo when they are ones in charge.
War, pestilence and famine will thin our herds.
So you think there are things he could say to convince you to support him?
What I do know factually, however, that this world of ours simply won’t be able to cope with the demand for energy and all kinds of emissions and waste, once giant countries like China and India will have reached the same level of use of natural resources that the West currently has.
First, even if they achieve that level of use, which is by no means guaranteed, how do you know the world can't cope with it? Human beings are enterprising creatures.
The laws of the free market dictate that prices will soar and soar, and the lifestyle of Joe Average will undergo a sharp decline in quality.
Actually a free market will generate alternatives that will out-compete high priced products and services. That's why free markets are a good thing.
Hmmm... I actually like these ‘stingy’ questions.
1. I am Dutch, and hence I know less than you do about Obama. Hence my care about venting things about people I don’t know that well. And as I said: I am wary about his ‘pop-star’ status everywhere. Especially young folks are fond of guys like Bono, in whom they can project all their idealistic fantasies, without really knowing their idol. And that is pretty dangerous.
2. Granted: I can’t predict where India and China will eventually be in, say, 20 years.
3. Point taken. Free markets have proven to be more inventive than non-free ones. The most polluting cars ever were produced in the old USSR and GDR. Who likes a Trabant car nowadays? Hey, Bono does! (he used one during his tours as a stage prop, true... and very funny at that).
So let me conclude with sharing your hopes: we should be able to come up with decent alternatives for traditional fuel, house heating, airconditioning systems, what have you. We must work at it.
My apologies if I sounded harsh. I didn't realize you were Dutch, so I understand that you aren't as familiar with Obama. Hopefully he won't be elected, and you'll never have to be.
So let me conclude with sharing your hopes...
I think it's best to think positively about the future. People are very good at finding ways to their improve lives, which is why governments should stay out of their way and let them ;-)
Doei!
What is the political landscape like in your country now?
Last I knew you had a constitutional monarchy (House of Orange?) and also I thought a Parliament.
What are the political positions of those currently in power in your country? Are they at odds with the current feelings of the citizens there?
Hehe! How on Earth did you find the goodbye word: ‘Doei’? You must know that it is not at all that common in Holland, it is region-specific, and it’s actually the word of choice in my own town! Do you know me? :)
FRiend, then we will not have gone to the inconvenience and expense (in every way) trying to prevent something we cannot, and we will retain the technological ability to survive as a species.
Humans have survived changes in climate before, and will continue to do so, even if we legislate ourselves back into the stone age.
The climate changed long before the SUV, the thermometer, or refined petroleum, with highs and lows (ice ages), which humans did little to affect.
You might as well try to stop the tides as change the climate in any meaningful way. Even "Nuclear Winter" postulated after unleashing all the nuclear arsenals on the planet, would only last for a few years--a mere heartbeat in the lifespan of humanity.
Thanks for asking! Holland has a Parliament (150 seats) and a Senate (75 seats). The Senate is for checks and balances, consists mainly of elderly experienced politicians, and serves as an instument for ‘weighing’ decisions and laws constructed by Parliament, designed for keeping things thoughtful and unsensational.
We have an Administration consisting of Secretaries of State (called: Ministers here). The Administration is headed by a Prime Minister (mr. Balkenende at present). Now, here’s the thing not well understood, even by many Dutchmen and -women: the aforementioned parties are the acting everyday political forces, but we call our Government as outlined above the ‘Cabinet’. The total ‘Government’ actually is completed by the Crown, at present Queen Beatrix. She has a formal position: she has to sign legislation before it becomes operative, and never refuses to do so (or the country would become ungovernable for a shorter or longer period). But, and here’s the catch: she does have the right to refuse on personal/ethical grounds, and then would have to stand down, resign, and that would mean the end of our active, meaningful Royalty. Something like this actually happened in the Kingdom of Belgium, where, some 15 years ago, the reigning King took leave of his Office for three days, because he couldn’t, on conscientious grounds, concur with a new law on abortion. After the law had been passed, he took up Office again. Granted, this is not very elegant, but it’s the result of a highly complicated construction including an elected Cabinet and a Sovereign. The only way of doing things otherwise would be to demand of our Royalty to be there only as some decorative institution, a gilded reminder of a glorious past, with no political power altogether. This will no doubt happen at some time or other, but it will take decades or perhaps even more.
Currently we have a Cabinet that can be called rightwing, although a socialist party also is taking part. But this party is in effect supporting liberal-capitalist politics. My personal, and pretty big, problem with our Cabinet is that it is firmly rooted in narrow-minded Calvinism of a type we thought had become obsolete long ago. Proper health care for the elderly, education, and other essential topics don’t figure high on the agenda. And that is why so many Dutch people feel unhappy, disenfranchised, or very cross with these people. In current ratings, populist politicians score very high, even without having a meaningful agenda. One example: ms. Rita Verdonk, who started out as an extremist Leftie, is now the leader of a ‘movement’ as she calls it (which means a party without proper members); she has a frightening tendency to want to go ‘back to the ‘50s, when life was uncomplicated’ (as if it ever was!); she does not want to disclose the names of who fund her movement (it’s a public secret that half-criminal barons from the building sector fund her); and worst of all: she’s on a sort of populist campaign trail nowadays (and there isn’t even an election campaign!) and she’s never present in Parliament, but happily cashes in her monthly € 8,000 check for the seat she occupies in Parliament - which in my view is criminal and should be punished with a very heavy fine.
So to conclude: the landscape is not very encouraging at present, and a majority of Dutch fellowmen and -women think so.
I once dated a girl from Amsterdam, and she used to say “doei” all the time - I didn’t realize it was a regional thing. Tot ziens!
Thanks for commenting. I grant that not many people know that decent reliable recordings of temperature (changes) only exist for about a century now. What went on before... we do not know.
Secondly: I agree that we must not go bankrupt in trying to avert climate change. That would be pretty suicidal.
Every sensible people(most of them “conservative”)agree with the C.S.Lewis quotation AND also with a rational and sensible critic of the coming new rulings and decisions...
It’s a major issue of civilisation! We must not give up our capacity to take SENSIBLE and RATIONAL decisions instead of irrational-emotional decisions founded on fears and linked to the loss of religious faith and hope.We must not surrender to the Big Government “civil servants” and give up our freedom.
Communist already tried to fool the crowds with a kind of fake religion which was the true opium of the people.
“Yes we can” take care of the world and human beings BUT ONLY based on reason and(according to me) faith...The question is what to do and how and not about doing nothing!
Obama and hese fans are only playing on emotions till hysteria
The CORRECT thing to do at this point is "good science" (i.e. spend research money to find out what is REALLY going on--not the eco-bullshit that has been pushed up to this point). "If" there is global warming, the effect will NOT be your "children suffereing from famine", because the ONE area that will greatly improve is agriculture---both from the fertilizing effect of higher atmospheric CO2 and from longer growing seasons.
It is MUCH too early, and the data is too sparse to begin making policy. Given the recent revelations on the drastic decrease in sunspot activity in this latest starting cycle, "global cooling" looks like a more likely prospect. Now THAT "will" be the catastrophe you should fear.
The discredited Precautionary Principle rears its ugly head.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." - William Pitt
Government could theoretically regulate the very air you breath, well at least exhale. Is oxygen regulation next?
You have a good point. As I noted, we only have decent temperature stats for a century or so, which is pretty short compared to the Earth’s age...:)
Also: as a scientist, I am against all types of fear-mongering about genetic engineering in agriculture, and even more so, the violence that animal activists are so fond of. People who threaten and want to kill other people who use frogs and rodents to find out how to combat fatal diseases... now that is sick.
That said, we should make an effort to decrease pollution and bad emissions at all times. Superfine dust and carcigenous gases are bad, simple as that.
But I bet we could easily share a drink together and discuss the matter.
In addition many behave and want us to believe that our world is endless and that we are not mortal...
Reason,science and religion tell us the contrary!
For the moment we “only” have to WORK improving our knowledge and trying to get a better life in a better world
There is one big problem with this theory. What if your predictions on climate change were wrong. You could actually make the problem worse and actually hinder our species ability to cope with the eventual reality.
For example: What if the 'general consensus' had determined that climate warming was occurring and accelerating due to human activity. Laws got passed limiting production and curtailing energetic activities that contributed to the perceived warming problem. What if we had completely over looked the primary factor determining climate change. Like for example Solar Energetic input. And it just so happened that the Solar Energetic input was dropping dramatically due to well known cycles. So instead of warming, the planet actually cooled and we began to enter an ice age.
Now how would you feel about the fact that the actions that were performed to stop global warming were actually going to hinder our ability to cope with global cooling ? People could actually end up freezing to death.
Hmmm... I didn’t know I went THAT far in a philosophical way...
I respectfully disagree with what Pitt said (I don’t know the man, admitted). And that is because human freedom, as is freedom of speech, is not infinite. We may try to push the limits. We can all try to own three houses and five cars and boundless territories, but we’ll meet limits. sooner or later.
Once, not so long ago, smoking was seen as everyone’s privilege, whereever and whenever. Not so now anymore, and with good reasons. And the country with ‘freedom’ as one of its main objectives also was the first to impose strict laws and rulings on the matter, because maximizing freedom on smoking also means imposing the bad effects of one’s habit on others, with possibly lethal results.
Yes, one could make a case like: ‘99.9% of certainty that smoking is bad for you isn’t enough. Only 100% will do.’ But that is, in my humble opinion, pure folly.
Good reply, thoughtful remarks. I’d conjecture that we will have to make do with what we know now, and act on that. The future is unwritten, indeed. Any scenario is possible. But the only logical conclusion then would be: sit still and hope for the best. Which is pure passivity.
We know very, very little about almost everything. But that should not deter us from using that small knowledge to make predictions and then act on behalf of these predictions.
And yes, we may be wrong. That’s life, I guess.
... I don’t really connect the environmental issue with upcoming fascism. To me, the current obsessions in the West regarding invading peoples privacy with all kinds of ‘taps’, ‘personal profiling’, identification scaremongering, and invading peoples houses randomly with SWAT-teams because there might be a 0.0000001% chance that 0.0000001% gramme of cannabis is located somewhere... now THAT scares me,
That scares me as well, but I still must disagree with you. I do not believe the totalitarian mindset is limited to just one kind of obsessive meddling. At least not in the US.
In this country, those who are prone to controlling others will often do so by whatever means are politically available. For example, many Americans who wish to restrict gun ownership often wish to restrict property rights, free speech, and religious liberty as well. There are a substantial number of Americans who believe their fellow citizens need to be controlled by government force in all aspects of life. Once these people have power over a certain area, they will fight tooth and nail to keep that power. That's why I am very reluctant to give our government any new powers to address the possible problem of climate change.
If climate change is inevitable, and we try to fix it anyway, then we leave our children with a political system where nearly all aspects of their lives are subject to government control. After all, what we eat, where we work, and how we live all affect global temperature... at least according to those who are calling for new laws to prevent global warming.
But even if man-made climate change is real, and even if it is possible for us to prevent it, I don't think the US government is capable of doing so. In all likelihood our leaders would use any new powers they get to help their cronies or to advance personal agendas. They would not use the new laws to actually solve the problems of climate change.
So no matter what, I think we are better off just trying to adapt to the affects of climate change using our own ingenuity. Giving our government more power will just make things worse, no matter what is really going on with the global climate.
And by your own words, we should suspect that any proponent of any predictive theory that states 'debate is over' and 'critics need to be prosecuted', is probably not acting in our best interests.
Very good comment. I agree that the urge for control doesn’t come in the form of one single issue. We do have similar problems in the Netherlands. Consider the plans to soon hand out ‘energy markings’ to houses (red, yellow, or green). The next step would of course be to fine owners of a ‘red’ house, even if it’s a nice old monumental building... reminds me of what happened when a couple of years back, we got mandatory identification duty in Holland. Everyone is obliged to carry an ID-card here from 16 upwards. As soon as that law became operative, police officers were hanging around secondary schools and fining every kid who forgot his or her ID-card... nice way of filling the Governments treasury; and totalitarian too, I might add.
Holland is suffering from a control craze right now. It reminds me of the many ways in which the Churches of old exercised total control: over marriage, over the duty to procreate, and perhaps worst: over how to maintain a stationary feudal society, with no chance for upward climbing at all. It happened in the past, so why shouldn’t it happen again?
Not really, no. Of course critics mustn’t be persecuted, I never said that anywhere. I tend to take note of what the best scientists have to say on the subject, e.g. in ‘Nature’ and ‘Science’. And then carefully weigh their arguments. And I tend to avoid stories by special interest groups which are prejudiced and still managed to involve certain scientists in their pet projects.
You have to make do with the best there is, and even that may be insufficient and wrong. It’s in the nature of the beast (science, I mean). In this respect, I am a follower of Sir Karl Popper, a philosopher who deserves kudos from FR because he so eloquently debunked the ‘scientific’ pretenses of Marxism, as well as Freudian psychoanalysis.
Was not insinuating that YOU wanted to prosecute critics or shut down debate. That has been the stated objectives of Jim Hansen a NASA Scientist who has been one of the major proponents of the AGW theory here in the States. There are two recent articles posted here about him within the past few hours.
It would be pretty hard to know him, he's been dead for 202 years.
:O(
One of Great Britain's greatest statesmen.
I also note that you seem to have bought into the Second Hand Smoke nonsense as well as AGW, yet in a previous post you call yourself a scientist.
I would think that as a scientist you'd know that consensus isn't science.
Many Americans don't care if smoking is 110% bad for people or if the temperature zooms a degree higher in the next hundred years (or drops a degree either).
We're not Dutch socialists and have no wish to be. Conservative Americans are all for property rights in which the owner of property decides what legal activities may take place there and are also for letting markets and individuals develop ways to cope with AGW, not goobermint mandates and stupid cap and trade laws that will have the middle class return to semi-serf status.
Dutch aren’t socialists, believe me. Yup, we care about the smoking issue, with good reason. If I were so lucky to have a three-month old baby, I wouldn’t let it be taken care of by a chain-smoker, no sir.
Markets tend to be guided by short-term profits. In most cases that can be a good thing. In others, it can be harmful. I for one wouldn’t want to be part of a society where markets lead to sort of a lemming-like behaviour, damn the consequences, etc. etc.
One example: despite many pointers toward the need to be utterly apprehensive, heroin once was a simple over-the-counter drug. Legally sold, because the free market dictated that. The knowledgeable pessimists were proven right; but they had formed a minority. The consequences were disastrous, as we all know. Although the drug got banned later, its insidious attractiveness remained. Skepticism and proper testing beforehand could have avoided what eventually happened.
“the coming fascist state” (???)
check the schools, check tax rates, check the congress, check the attitudes of the population.
(boots and black shirts to be handed out after the obama win.)
IMHO
Ah, yes, the precautionary principle, designed by the Marxists at the UN and loved by totalitarian liberals the world over.
We have no proof something is bad but we must act on it as a precaution. And the precautionary methods the liberals want to impose resemble either fascism - government de facto control of all private property - or communism - theft of wealth and its redistribution to Marxist leeches.
Do you work for the UN or the Sierra Club?
How about you set the example to reduce your carbon footprint and go live in cave and eat lichen. And don’t drive there.
INDEED.
How anyone can miss the neon writing on thousands of walls is beyond me.
All the more so for Conservatives.
All the more so for Christian Conservatives.
All the MORE so for Christian Conservatives ON FR!
Sigh.
While you personally may not be a socialist, the fact that you think markets lead to lemming like behavior, certainly leads this conservative American to believe that you're at least swimming in socialist waters. It is government that demands and enforces group-think and the herd mentality, not the market.
The rest of your post concerning heroin is just strawman jibber-jabber.
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