Posted on 08/25/2005 6:01:04 PM PDT by HeebrewHammer
The Only Thing We’re Short of Is Time by Rabbi Daniel Lapin President, Toward Tradition
With five single daughters, each more beautiful, brilliant, and gracious than the next, I am naturally interested in the topic of “meeting & mating.” Perusing various match-making websites the other day, I was baffled by how many women, who, as part of their “sell” proclaimed their political affiliation. Frankly, who cares? And didn’t their mothers ever tell them not to talk about religion, sex, or politics? What is more, almost to a woman, they all declared themselves to be “left wing liberal.” Now, why on earth would they want to discourage the entire universe of intelligent, handsome, and virile conservative bachelors?
A friend of mine, a single Jewish business woman, recently helped me understand the answer. She welcomed higher electricity prices, she said, since they incentivized her to cut down her power usage. Get that? Using lots of electricity is a problem, not because it is expensive, but because it is evil. She wanted electricity to cost more in order to discourage its use.
None of this was about saving money. This girl owns her own condo and wears four hundred dollar sweaters. She was talking morality—doing the right thing not the economical thing. As she sees it, it is obviously just plain wrong to use more than your fair share of electricity.
Are we really suffering from a shortage of electricity or other energy? Should we be rationed? The moral answer is yes if we are suffering an energy shortage and no if we are only imagining one.
This would not be the first time that we have imagined an energy shortage. Until the early 18th century, colonial homes were heated mostly by burning wood. Forests were vanishing and the rapidly growing colonies were running out of fire wood. Eliminate immigration and ration firewood, was the call of the day, until they found and began burning coal. As with anything new and untried, coal brought dangers. But these were soon overcome and by 1840 America was deriving energy from a million tons of coal a year.
William Jevons, an economics professor at University College, London, became famous on account of a paper he published in 1865. It was entitled The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal Mines. He predicted that British prosperity would end within fifty years when the nation ran out of coal and recommended an industrial slowdown in order to conserve what coal was left. We are just about into 2002 and Britain is still mining and burning coal.
America used to depend on whale oil for lighting. During the early 19th century, pundits warned that since whales were being harvested at an ever increasing rate, America would soon go dark. They recommended turning out all lights no later than ten o’clock in order to conserve what whale oil was left. They were right about running out of whale oil, but they were wrong about America going dark. In 1859 a railroad conductor called Edwin Drake had struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Lanterns started burning paraffin instead of whale oil until Edison’s electricity lit American cities.
Since the 1970s we have heard much about exhausting the world’s petroleum reserves. Just how soon has been debated, but nobody doubts that the amount of oil is ultimately limited, just as whale oil was. Should we therefore advise petroleum conservation as they once did with firewood, whale oil, and coal?
The truth is that although we do need energy, we have no need specifically for firewood, whale oil, coal, or petroleum. Each in its age suited our purpose. One of Judaism’s central messages is how uniquely human it is to use energy. Animals seek no external sources of energy. They hunt and gather, always expending slightly less bodily energy in the quest than they gain from consuming the quarry. But we humans possess a deep yearning to liberate ourselves from drudgery. Subconsciously this may be because we yearn to have the time to devote to more spiritual pursuits. We are capable of infinite creativity and invention, and need not contemplate energy shortage. It was our limitless human ingenuity that carried us from firewood to coal, and from whale oil to petroleum.
In each step we learned how to extract ever more energy from each pound of matter. Now we have nuclear power, the process that releases almost infinite amounts of energy. Could nuclear power perhaps be for us today what petroleum was to those who foresaw the end of whale oil? Soon, perhaps, we will no longer seek spurious moral redemption by conserving energy. We will find authentic moral purpose in our religious faith while we purchase energy just as we do clothing and coffee today—by consulting our budgets not our consciences.
You know why those single girls described their politics as “left wing liberal?” Because they think that is the best way to say “I’m a good, moral person who cares about others.” Let’s stop seeking moral approval by wearing a badge of ‘left wing liberal’. It may be our politics— it should not be our morality. That ought to be Biblical faith.
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Toward Tradition is a 501(c)3 organization based in Seattle, WA, dedicated to restoring America's culture and building the alliance between Jews and Christians. All gifts are tax-deductible. To contact us please write to P.O. Box 58, Mercer Island, WA 98040, or phone 206 236 3046.
So let's keep on using them up!!!!
Ya... REALLY conservative.
Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.
Nicholas Murray Butler
Good grief. You sound like one of those "Zero Sum" types. Maybe your resources are finite but mine aren't. They are renewable and replenishable.
My goodness! I thought the man was saying that all of his daughters were smart & beautiful and he loved them all the same.
It's amazing what you can learn on FR.
In the bigger picture- the key is not to want. Okay, so we have infinite electricity... the world will instantly take it for granted and find some other resource to fret and moan about. All that new power may well cause inventions and new industries that kill the environment 10 times faster.
It never ends. People should all just be happy with what they have and live on small farms, if you want my opinion.
He contends that humans are the earths greatest resourse. He was an economist who laid to rest the tiresome arguments of overpopulation... At least for some.
BTW, Tax-Chicks eight kids... None of your business. Perhaps you should rethink some of the conservative ideas about intrusion.
Just a thought.
M
"There is good in the universe,and there is evil in the universe, and that distiction is not hard to make."
-Superman
In the bigger picture- the key is not to want.
Okay. Then the bigger picture is to NOT BE HUMAN.
Ya... cause you live on that mythical planet that's infinite in resources, eh?
Personally I believe that God made a world able to support all the humans He deigns to put here. I don't recall Him saying to go forth and multiply...until there are a certain billion of you!
Of course their my business.
They compete for resources, don't they?
Defusing the Population Bomb
(mentions Julian Simon)
http://www.cato.org/dailys/10-15-99.html
Bumpersticker seen:
My child consumes more energy than your honor student!
You claim that having more than two children is not conservative. You must have a definition of conservative in mind. As evidenced by your post 40, that definition is simplistic, based on an eighth grade etymological analysis (at least it was eight grade when I went to school) of the word.
I state that you have an opinion typical of a "morally" superior liberal ("morally" as defined by a liberal like Maureen Dowd).
So I'm calling you a liberal, and you say that I don't know what a conservative is.
Look really close at post 10. I did not claim to be a conservative.
My point is that your attitude is a typical liberal one.
And so far, you are admitting it.
A few nits.
In post 28 you mean "affect", not "effect". Your misuse of the word hoard has already been noted.
And your contention that having your errors noted means you have won the argument is specious (post 32).
They grow up to be adults that compete for the limited (and yes... they ARE limited) resources.
I know most of you can not understand this... but I am both a conservative AND an environmentalist. And Humans have taken over enough resources, and should leave some for the rest of the web.
That's because she is a feminist wolf in a conservative ewe's clothing. To be liberated from the burden of men and male children is ultimate goal.
The "SCUM manifesto" was published in 1983 by Valerie Solanas, a radical U.S. feminist previously known for attempting to assassinate Andy Warhol in 1968. In the book's title, SCUM stands for the Society for Cutting Up Men. Within its covers, Solanas calls on women to "destroy the male sex," arguing that medical science made it possible to give birth only to females and without the aid of males.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2417
I bet she has a pet dog that subs for a child. A lot of liberals do that these days.
We grow more grain and produce on less land than any point in history. That same produce and grain is priced so low the gov. subsidizes the producers.
We produce more lumber (end product) than at any time in our history and the U.S. has more trees (standing) than ever in our history.
Metal prices are very low compared with historical data. Petroleum products as well. The spike, whether in metals (ore) or petroleum is based on inept planning by governments, not the lack of resource.
We make more efficient use of existing resources by expand technology into more efficient areas. That is the beauty of the free market. Not the gluttonous consumption you seem to see.
If what you say is to be true, then I would think that we would be paying exorbitant prices for damn near everything, since from the industrial age on, we have been using more and more resources as well as expanding population. Truth be told, we (the U.S. as well as the rest of the world) live better than at any time in our histories. We have more choice as to what to purchase (food, energy) by way of sustenance, that we can now buy all kinds of luxuries. The poor in America have only a 25" color t.v. and one car...
Government intervention in the free flow of ideas and invention have proven to be a much bigger hindrance to prosperity than any 'resource gathering' by the peoples therein.
BTW, Teddy Roosevelt was a Conservationist, not a Conservative. Bull Moose party I believe.
M
That's just sad. I'm not sure how that makes you an "environmentalist" but I suppose you must have your own definition of what that is so there's no use arguing with you.
Is it possible to be a conservative AND an environmental CONSERVATIonist? How about conservative and watermelon (Green on the outside, Red on the inside)?
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