A loony sect of modern flagellants

There is one good thing about the lunatic “Global Warming” catechism now taught our youth in the mandatory government youth propaganda camps (taught essentially as a “state-established” religion without meaningful “equal time” for rebuttals, which ought to cause someone to go back and re-read the First Amendment) and eagerly embraced by the tax-guzzling, power-mad cretins now in charge in Washington City:

When they are finally forced to admit that the globe has been cooling again — not warming — for the past decade, yet proceed to demand PRECISELY THE SAME REMEDIES for “Global Cooling” (which they will cleverly dub “Climate Change”) as they did for “Global Warming” — higher electric bills, more government controls, taxes sufficient to cripple our entire industrial economy and generally lower our standard of living in keeping with the world socialist doctrine that America and particularly the “capitalist rich” must be “punished” and “made to sacrifice” in penitence for our former prosperity — there is finally a decent chance that they’ll simply be laughed out of town.

“The SAME PUNISHMENTS to be inflicted on us in punishment for Global Cooling, as you used to prescribe for us in punishment for Global WARMING?! Ha ha! Good one! Have you heard the one about the prostitute and the midget?”

For the record, 1) the globe is now again cooling, albeit infinitesimally, just as Time and Newsweek declared in major feature stories back in 1975 — and the next Ice Age is indeed the real problem, since (if the world WERE to warm again), modest warming is actually good for us, since more people die of cold than heat, and warm climates allow us to grow more food.

2) The modest fluctuations in question, of a couple of degrees per century, are of minimal importance to anyone. Even the “rising ocean levels” predicted by the extremists’ worst-case scenarios are on the order of one inch.

3) During years when the globe has warmed, man-made carbon dioxide has had no significant impact on that warming, which is caused by the oceans and mostly the sun. (Mars warms in a rhythm which matches the Earth’s. Do we believe this is because Martians are driving too many SUVs and burning too much coal?) Mankind creates about 3 percent of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide, which is not the largest contributor to the blessed greenhouse effect, in the first place. Water vapor is. Shall we next try to ban water vapor? and

4) Even if we could de-populate and throw America back into the stone age tomorrow, and even if man-made carbon dioxide DID contribute in some measure to global warming (which it does not), this would still have no effect on the climate, since the authority of Mr. Reid and Mr. Obama does not extend to India and China, which are building new coal-fired power plants every day.

“Global warming” is a scam promoted by those who want more taxes, more control of our lives, less enjoyment of the freedom represented by private automobiles and single-family homes — a modern sect of flagellants who (when you come right down to it) hate mankind, view mankind as a pox and parasite on an otherwise lovely world full of weeds and bugs more deserving of care, opportunity and “protection” than our own children, who would view as a “regretful necessity” any government policy that could succeed in starving and thus reducing the number of humans by at least half.

I’m not making this stuff up. See www.rightsidenews.com/200907035325/energy-and-environment/climate-delusions.html ; or
www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will021509.php3 ; or go to http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/ and choose Professor Williams’ “EPA” column for July 15, which should be released for public consumption by the time you read this.

Or, if you’re willing to do a little old-fashioned book reading, try the fine new book “Climate of Extremes / Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You To Know,” from the Cato Institute, by Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr., or “Re-Thinking Green / Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy,” from the Independent Institute, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close.

These are both thoughtful, well-documented books by folks with notable academic credentials and a proven record of moderate skepticism about lockstep big-government propaganda. Choose your favorite and buy copies for all your friends.

I was going to do more of a “Summer Reading List” here, but there never seems to be room. The short version: Go to http://www.bigheadpress.com/rtbook and check out “Roswell, Texas” and “The Probability Broach,” wild and wonderful “alternative history” graphic novels by our libertarian pals L. Neil Smith, Scott Bieser, et al. I still somewhat prefer “Broach,” in part because it’s in full glowing color, but “Roswell” is newer and, of course, refreshingly off-kilter.

Davy Crockett survived the Alamo, see, and refused to let Texas join the United States, as a result of which in 1947 it’s still an independent republic under President Charles A. Lindbergh when something strange crash lands in the West Texas town of Roswell …

More “laid back” but also well worth a look and darned timely is Dave Duffy’s paperback “Can America Be Saved from Stupid People”, available at http://www.backwoodshome.com/store/files/dd1.html.

More as time allows.

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Meantime, a number of thoughtful respondents to my hypothetical example, last week, of a small group of freedom-lovers attempting to set up a tax-free town in the countryside, finding their efforts stymied by squatting socialist newcomers who promptly “vote” to create taxation, unionized government schools, etc., suggest the answer is to “not allow any voting mechanism other than unanimous consent, the only voting mechanism compatible with the Zero Aggression Principle.”

Sounds good, but how to go about the “not allowing”?

American freedom-lovers are currently surrounded by a casually socialist majority, trained in the government propaganda camps to believe “Making the rich pay for the things which are demanded by all the people” is “only fair,” since after all they “have more to begin with.”

Go to the store. Buy ten dollars worth of stuff. The clerk asks you for $10.81. Reply that you will gladly pay the $10, but not the 81 cents in tax he’s trying to collect, since you gave no consent to this levy, which was rather imposed by a majority of state lawmakers you never voted for under the mistaken impression that “something other than unanimous consent is compatible with the Zero Aggression Principle.”

Even if we assume your cashier is well-read in Libertarian political philosophy and Austrian economics — a bit of a stretch — he’s still likely to say, “I know what you mean, bub, but if you don’t pay the 81 cents I can’t let you have the stuff. That 8.1 percent would come out of my paycheck at the end of the day, assuming I still had a job, and if I let everyone do that it would add up to more than they’re paying me, here.”

Attempts to “not allow” the withholding of tax from our paychecks will have equally predictable, albeit more onerous, outcomes.

And thus we “allow” the kleptocrats to take 8 percent, 16 percent, 24 percent and more (effective combined tax rates for “the rich” will soon top 51 percent, again) of our wealth and our earnings, compounding their Depression-breeding levies every day, because this doesn’t yet seem to be the perfect day to die in a shoot-out with the armed agents of the kleptocracy.

I have no fast or easy solution. I just find advice as to what we should “not allow” to be not terribly useful, unless those bestowing the advice are going to tell us how to “not allow” it, in circumstances where those who believe in freedom and property rights remain considerably outnumbered.

3 Comments to “A loony sect of modern flagellants”

  1. Anon Says:

    > I just find advice as to what we should “not allow” to be not
    > terribly useful, unless those bestowing the advice are going to tell
    > us how to “not allow” it, in circumstances where those who believe
    > in freedom and property rights remain considerably outnumbered.

    While libertarian moral philosophy is fun to read, I think individual liberty is decided by the military balance of power between an individual vs. a squad of eight. When it was Kentucky long rifles and guerrilla tactics vs. Redcoats in squares, there was a lot of individual liberty. Today there is less. Here are some suggestions for shifting that balance towards the individual. Each of these steps should be tolerable enough to not attract a huge enforcement effort:

    1. Overwrite Windows with Ubuntu.

    2. Browse the web with an anonymizing proxy over TOR.

    3. Encourage (cheerlead, donate) developers to build a “panic button” application for the Google phone. All your interactions with public officials should be recorded, with your friends watching it live.

    4. TOR allows hidden web sites. How about pay-for-view porn? Porn has driven the successful expansion of lots of communications media.

    5. TOR allows hidden web sites. How about a gold coin warehouse/bank to clear payments for the porn?

    6. And craigslist, ebay, amazon, with no content restrictions, clearing through the gold coin bank.

  2. Dirk Dahlgren Says:

    Your comments about global Warming are right on. Keep up the good work

  3. Anton Sherwood Says:

    “The largest contributor to the blessed greenhouse effect” need not be the same as the most important variable contributor.

    As to “not allow”, are you confusing two levels? The difficulty of withdrawing from the empire’s tax system has little bearing on the feasibility of preventing addition of a local tax system.

    A city could be founded with a charter provision denying itself any taxing power. But then I suppose the predators will incorporate Taxville nearby and annex Notaxville, getting the state’s courts to bless the action on the grounds that Notaxville is not a real city.