Dey wanna feel sumptin'?
I'll make 'em feel sumtin' right here!
Posted on 02/02/2003 5:56:15 AM PST by Clive
The two greatest boondoggles being foisted on Canadians right now, whose damaging effects will last for years unless dismantled, are gun registration and the Kyoto protocol.
To those not afflicted with ideological myopia, the evidence is overwhelming that firearm registration is prohibitively costly and totally unnecessary, with no discernible effect on reducing either gun crimes or violence. Statistical evidence is irrefutable.
Take handguns: they've been registered in Canada for 69 years - since 1934, during which time the percentage of handgun murders has remained relatively constant.
In 2001, 64.3% of homicides were committed with handguns; 40 years earlier, in 1961, the percentage was 49.8%. That speaks volumes.
Now that owning an unregistered gun is a crime, westerners and others are appearing in public with unregistered long guns - .303 hunting rifles, 30/30 carbines, shotguns - and defying the law.
Officially, it's estimated 250,000 Canadians have not registered their guns. In fact, the true number may be over a million. As it is, the number of guns owned in Canada seems deliberately underestimated.
The $1 billion cost of this useless, mismanaged boondoggle should be enough to defeat a government which originally promised a $2 million net cost. If a law can't be enforced, it should be dropped or changed.
I hope pressure by the provinces and citizens is maintained so the next prime minister can scrap the program. Write off the $1 billion, rather as the present PM paid $500 million in penalties to cancel the EH101 helicopter contract when he was elected in 1993.
He is now trying to reinstate it, while pretending it's different.
As demonstrably stupid as firearm registration is, it pales in comparison to the lunacy of the Kyoto protocol which Canada has ratified - with hidden exclusions to the auto industry. Doesn't that tell you something? No one denies it's going to cost industry and Canadians plenty to live up to the dopey goals of Kyoto. This might be acceptable if Kyoto was going to have any measurable effect on global warming, but it isn't. How many really understand what Kyoto is all about?
Certainly most Canadians don't, and certainly not the PM who, frankly, radiates signs he is losing his grip on reality, as well as on his party.
Protocol's irrelevant
While this PM is no rocket scientist, at least his successor won't be a klutz and may back out of the protocol, or fiddle with it so it becomes harmless (it's already irrelevant).
A lot of people still think Kyoto is about controlling pollution and saving the environment. Utterly wrong.
It is about controlling carbon dioxide emissions, which have nothing to do with pollution like acid rain, chemical or industrial waste.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but essential to plant life. In fact, with more carbon dioxide, plant life will flourish, thereby producing more food for humans, birds and animals that environmental crazies prefer.
True, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere acts as insulation, like clouds, to prevent heat from escaping and therefore creating warmth on the Earth's surface.
Alabama and Arizona are both hot in the summer. At sundown in Arizona, the dry desert air cools quickly as thermal radiation flees upwards. In verdant Alabama, moisture and humidity keep the heat from escaping and the land warm. Alabama has a greenhouse blanket that Arizona hasn't.
Normally reasoning is considered a good thing, as opposed to legislating based on emotion. It is your contention that Libertarians merely advance the appearance of reason, as opposed to actual reason? If so, there should be obvious holes or inconsistencies in Libertarian positions. What are they?
The philosophy of libertariansism is quite simple: it is unethical to initiate force against others. Self defense is fine, military attacks against aggressors is fine, and jailing (or, for that matter, executing) people who have hurt, cheated, or killed others is fine ... but "preventative" laws like those mandataing seatbelts or prohibiting drugs, or the armed robbery that is taxation, is not.
Who would come if there were no welfare and no free health care? Stop leaving out the cookies, and ants stop coming into the kitchen.
Drugs for all who want them also springs to mind.
That is the case already ... except they go to jail. But does this help anything? No, if access to drugs is higher, drugs are cheaper and more pure than before.
Suicide for all who are careless.
Those who are warned and take risks anyway ... The alternative is roadblocks for seatbelts. Do you prefer this?
Lets also remove handrails on all paths which are elevated.
No, don't remove them. But you don't need to jail those who don't install handrails - you only need to not shop there and they will install handrails just to get your business.
Stop painting stripes on the center of roads-stop taxing me to pave the road-which leads to the next question...
So it seems you would pay for stripes. So would I. But this doesn't need to come from government. Private roads are also striped. How do you suppose that could possibly be?
Simple? Yes, for me, you show that position. You handily confuse the basic taxation ( for essential services & defense) with all other issues.
A Consitutionally limited government is so much smaller than what we have today, that taxes aren't necessary to support it. Somehow our country managed to survive without an income tax for nearly 150 years. How do you suppose that's possible? (And, when the income tax was first proposed, it was promised would never go above 4%, and was only temporary to fund the war effort.)
Dey wanna feel sumptin'?
I'll make 'em feel sumtin' right here!
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