Unborrowed Vision

This weekend, I picked up a copy of the most recent issue of Time magazine, expecting to learn what the real meaning of patriotism is. Inside, I found two, short essays; one by Barack Obama, one by John McCain, about what patriotism means to them. I was disappointed.

McCain’s essay was so abominable, I can’t even comment on it. Obama’s, on the other hand, was less despicable, but only because it (predictably) had less substance. I would like to take just a moment to talk about what it did have to say.

Obama focuses his essay around the Declaration of Independence, the greatest of our founding documents. He writes:

“We are a nation of strong and varied convictions and beliefs. We argue and debate our differences vigorously and often. But when all is said and done, we still come together as one people and pledge our allegiance not just to a place on a map or a certain leader but to the words my mother read to me years ago: ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’”

This is all fine and good, and I cannot disagree with what is written there. But listen to Mr. Obama’s interpretation of those words:

For me, it is the love and defense of [the ideals put forth in the Declaration of Independence] that constitutes the true meaning of patriotism. They are ideals that do not belong to any particular party or group of people but call each of us to service and sacrifice for the sake of our common good.

He professes to love and defend each man’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and follows this up by saying that these ideals call us to sacrifice and serve the common good. Its almost as though he were reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand when he wrote this, and decided to contradict her (and himself). Rand wrote:

Observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else’s. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results.

How, Mr. Obama, can one pursue one’s own happiness sacrificially for the sake of others? Don’t these ideals directly contradict? Yes, yes they do.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness means that man has the right to live in a society that is free from force and coercion, that he may work in whatever pursuit he chooses, that he is entitled to the products of his work, and that he may use those products in whatever way his conscience may dictate, so long as he does not initiate the use of force against another. With an increase in taxes of $800 billion dollars, more regulations of business, a mandated “living wage,” and mandated healthcare benefits for employees, this is exactly the society that Barack Obama is working against, rather than ideals that he loves and defends.

Barack Obama has demonstrated that he has no understanding at all of our nation’s founding document, and he wants to be the president.

I commented on gas prices in an earlier blog post, but I feel that more needs to be said.

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Nominee, has said that if elected, he would impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies. It is said that companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobile have made an “unfair profit, ” and that they should have to give the excess money that they made “back to the American people.” Obama himself has said:

“I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.”

Other liberals have spouted similar rhetoric. Here’s Hillary Clinton:

She wants to “take” their profits.

Obama and Hillary aren’t the only ones. Every Democrat in the Senate– as well as two Republicans– voted for such a windfall profits tax, which– thankfully– did not pass.

If you take away the windfall profits of oil companies, they will be unable to reinvest in new supply; they will be forced to slow their own production of crude oil. Where will they go for crude oil then? Ah, yes, the Mideast; where else? But buying their crude oil from the Mideast will be much more expensive than it would be if they were able to process it themselves. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to because Obama will have “taken” the money that they would need. But what does all of this mean for the average American?

As George Will notes in a video that is viewable here, Corporations don’t pay taxes, they just raise their prices, and the consumer pays them. Taxing away gas companies’ profits will only hurt the American consumer. That’s what happened in the 80’s under Carter’s profits tax, and it will happen again under a similar Obama tax– only this time it will be much worse. Why? Because this time around supply is being even further restricted by environmentalist congressmen–Democrats mostly. What exactly are they doing to restrict the supply of oil? First, a bit of history.

In 1995, Congress passed legislation that would have allowed oil production on a small fraction– less than one tenth of one percent– of ANWR. With this land designated for oil production, America could have produced an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil. Such a measure would certainly have been a huge step toward relieving America of its dependence on foreign oil, but the bill was vetoed by Clinton. Why? The same reason that the Democratically controlled Congress opposes the same drilling in the present day– Environmentalism.

Democrats today want the same things they wanted in ‘95: A complete and permanent halt of all development on ANWR, as well as a ban on offshore drilling on the east and west coast of the United States. The men who draft such proposals talk about the devastating effects that such acts, if taken, would have on the affected ecosystems. Not only are these claims unfounded (offshore drilling has actually been fairly clean since the ’70s, and as I said above, the ANWR drilling in question would be over less than .01% of the reserved land, thus affecting little of the wildlife, if any), but it is my sincere belief that the men who make them do not believe what they themselves are saying, and their motives are sinister in nature.

Think hard about what the liberals in Congress actually want.

First, they want a huge windfall profits tax of at least 25% on an industry that already has 45% of its income taxed, an action that will cause a decrease in supply, a rise in demand, and ultimately, an increase in gas prices. Next, they want to ban oil exploration and drilling everywhere. But thats not all: liberals want heavier taxes on coal companies, as well as the continuation of a very heavy tariff on ethanol from Brazil, which is a de facto ban. And it doesn’t even stop there: most liberals, including ‘Bama, do not support nuclear energy, the cleanest, safest energy source known to man, because– guess why? Environmental hazards.

If Barack Obama is elected president, this kind of supply restriction will occur, and it will result in a kind of perfect storm for the American consumer. Over time, gas prices will hit an unimaginable level, and the American economy will be devastated. But just as always, the guilty parties will receive no blame. The blame will fall on “greedy corporations,” and like fuel onto a fire, more harmful restrictions will surely be put in place.

If liberal Congressmen actually wanted lower gas prices for Americans, they would take the opposite position on all of the above issues. But they don’t. Why not?? These men are not stupid; they are not misguided; they are elected officials; they all have been well educated, and have a significant amount of experience in the world. They know what they are doing. They want our gas prices to go higher. George Will put it well when he said:

“On the left in this country what they want is a manufactured scarcity so that government can have the rationale to ration [oil supplies], which gives the government what the left wants: an ever more minute supervision of our daily choices.”

And while this is what the left wants on the surface, it is only a means to an end, which is, ultimately: the destruction of all that is good. The Dems in congress hate the profits of the oil companies, not because they are evil, but because they are good. They hate the production of oil refineries and drilling for oil, not because those things represent ruin, as they claim, but because they represent production. They consider that which is good to be evil because it is good. Ayn Rand wrote about this view of life in her book, Atlas Shrugged:

They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.

How can we defeat this kind of evil? As believers in Capitalism and the free market, we have historically put ourselves at a disadvantage. We must start believing that we are right, and that what we believe in is virtuous. We cannot win a fight in which we consider ourselves to be evil, and our opponent good.

We allow these men to escape from moral judgement by accepting that the cause that they say they fight for– environmentalism– is virtuous. As I have said before, to hold nature as an end in and of itself is not a moral position, it is an immoral one. All of that which is anti-mind is anti-life. By accepting the premise that environmentalism is a fundamentally positive ideal, we are giving them a moral sanction that they do not deserve. It is for this reason that we get candidates like John McCain, who compromise progress and pay lip service to “stewardship of creation.” McCain tentatively supports offshore drilling, but only recently, and only because it has become so politically convenient in the last few months.

Proclaim Capitalism to be your moral sanction, and that each man’s right to his own life is an absolute that cannot be superseded by any legislature. This is the truth they fear, but will never admit.

Tell it.

Yesterday I posted a brief blurb about Sarah Palin, but I wanted to elaborate on my endorsement of her, seeing as how last time I only mentioned her looks. There are several good strategic and ideological reasons to support John McCain nominating this woman for VP.

First, strategy.

The fact that she’s a woman makes her a more appealing choice. Like it or not, there are disgruntled ex-Hillary supporters ready to vote for anything with a set of ovary.

Face it. If she were nominated for Vice-President, McCain would get near 100% of the male vote. Even if a guy said he was going to vote Obama, he’d be lying. Either way, she’s probably the only person that could get Bill Clinton to vote for a republican.

Now the ideological stuff.

Palin is a firm supporter of The Second Amendment, and a member of the NRA. I bet she’s pleased about the big news this morning. This is huge, because I don’t think I could stomach another anti-gun presidency. But then again, John McCain is, well… Not a big gun rights guy. We’ll see what happens with that.

The other thing that I love about this woman is her energy policy. Just check out this video:

Liberate, de-control, de-regulate the whole energy business, says Kudlow. And she agrees! Come on! Who could not want her? We need someone in the White House espousing energy independence; this is absolutely crucial if we want a stable economy, and she hits the nail right on the head.

Not only does she have a great energy stance, but she has more balls than most of her male counterparts, threatening legal action against the Federal government if they don’t reconsider and change their absurd listing of polar bears on the Endangered Species List, a move that has the potential to cripple industry in Alaska completely.

Perhaps the best thing about Sarah Palin, though, is her outspoken efforts in the area of government transparency. At the start of her term in office, she pushed for the creation of a website that reports all of Alaska’s spending over 1000$. Since tax money is money taken against the citizen’s will, citizens have the right to, at the very least, know how all of it is being spent.

I hope John McCain doesn’t pick Baseballmitt Romney, or some other fake conservative. Palin is the way to go.

By the way, the unofficial campaign website to get Palin nominated is right here, as well as on my blogroll to the right. Pay them a visit and show your support.

You hear a lot of complaining about lobbyists these days. But just what is a lobbyist? One who practices Lobbyism, of course!

A lobbyist is one who is in the practice of influencing legislators with money on the behalf of special interest groups that have a stake in an issue. This holds true for any issue that you could name: pro-gun lobbies, like the NRA, and anti-gun lobbies, like the Brady Campaign. With over 3,500 different lobbies in the United States, each representing a different issue, its no wonder that some people question the amount of influence the individual person has over their representative in congress.

Not Hillary Clinton:

This comment pissed a lot of people off, but is she right? Do lobbyists represent everyday Americans? Barack 0bama responded to her, saying that certain lobbies, like ones that push big pharmaceutical companies, have more money, and therefore an inordinate amount of influence over legislators.

Okay, so…

“Lobbyists contribute meaningfully to the democratic process by representing the interests of everyday Americans!”

vs.

“Lobbyists put an outrageous amount of power into the hands of corporations, and give them the ability to dictate public policy!”

As usual, people have completely missed the point. Lobbies are entirely superfluous and unnecessary because their existence is based on the premise that whoever has the most influence wins. This is a hopelessly pragmatic way of looking at politics, reducing it to nothing more than gang warfare. It isn’t about who has the most influence, its about whats right and wrong. So how do we eliminate this kind of biggest-gang-wins mentality from Washington politics? By going after government, of course!

If we reduce the power of government itself, there will be no need for lobbies at all. For example: instead of worrying about lobbyists because we’re afraid that corporations will use them to pressure legislators into giving them corporate welfare, how about we eliminate congress’ power to grant corporate welfare in the first place? Worried about tariff lobbyists pushing Congress into imposing heavy duties on imports? Take away the government’s ability to regulate tariffs, and that concern disappears.

The same could apply for campaign finance reform. There should be no limit at all on how much an individual (or group of individuals) can give to a political campaign. Its their money, they earned it; let them give it to whomever they choose for whatever reason they choose. But first, take away the power of politicians to regulate or interfere with the economy. Corporations will then have no incentive to donate exorbitant amounts of money to a politician.

Everything that is now regulated by the government can be regulated more effectively and cheaper by the market; or as an Objectivist might call it: the facts of reality.

How about this:

Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of trade or association between individuals.

Something like that.

Word around the blogosphere is that John McCain is considering choosing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his Vice Presidential Nominee.

Here’s her picture:

Yes!

Lets hope McCain can get something right…

(sorry to Laura in Alaska for posting a fake pic. This one is legit.)

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

-Barry Goldwater

The reason we cannot win this war is simple; it results from our inability to name our enemy. Thus far, we’ve called it a war on terrorism.

But terrorism is a tactic; the United States cannot win a war on a tactic. In World War II, we did not fight a war on Kamikaze pilots; we did not fight a war on blitzkriegs; we fought fascism and totalitarianism– ideologies. In the Cold War, we did not fight a war on espionage; we fought Communism– an ideology. You see, a tactic implies a tactician; a tactician with certain motives, beliefs, and goals.

But for some reason, we are unable to state the motives, beliefs, and goals of our enemy. We are unable to do so much as name him. This is the direct result of our low moral self esteem. There is such a cult of moral grayness in the west that any proclamation of moral superiority is immediately taken to be naive and immoral. Didn’t you know that whats wrong to you may not be wrong to someone else? The only people worse than those who preach this tripe are those who know it to be misguided but appease the people preaching it anyway. It is these kinds of people that are running the war. Instead of standing up and proclaiming moral superiority over the enemy, Islamic Fundamentalism, they appease the liberal intellectuals and call it a War on Terrorism.

I couldn’t invent a better example of such appeasement than this. A US military sniper was using the Qur’an for target practice; the wrong people found out, and he got arrested. Not only was he arrested, but George Bush officially apologized, and

U.S. military commanders in Iraq held a ceremony to formally apologize and presented a new copy of the Qur’an to tribal leaders in the area where the incident took place.

When your military commanders are presenting tribal leaders with a copy of the book that inspired the death of nearly 3,000 of your fellow citizens as an apology for an act of desecration taken against that same book, you’ve lost the war that you’re fighting, and you aren’t going to win.

If we are unable, as a country, to proclaim our moral superiority over Islamic Totalitarianism, then we can’t win, and we should end the war and come home.

I just read Liberty Tree Lantern’s most recent post, which posed the question: Do liberal environmentalist senators care about your family? After a quick read of the post, I was unsurprised to learn that they most certainly do not …Not that I would expect them to– that would be a ridiculous expectation; after all, they don’t even know my family. What I was surprised to learn on Liberty Tree’s blog is this: apparently, they don’t care about their own families either.

Liberty Tree sent Senator Herb Kohl an e-mail admonishing him to relinquish land for oil drilling that has been delegated by the government (without any constitutional authority) for the “National Wildlife Refuge,” thus stripping it of any productive use that it may have.

Liberals will often dismiss drilling on this land, which was stolen from us by the government for the sake of polar bears, as well as offshore oil drilling, on the grounds that it does not have enough resources in it to even put a dent in our dependence on foreign oil. I am tired of hearing this. They don’t know how much oil is on that land– no one knows; there are estimates that range from hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil per year to hundreds of millions. All that anyone can be sure of at this point, is that these men are artificially restricting our supply of crude oil.

Traditional conservatives and most libertarians view this as a mere political difference, just another case of dumbliberalitis.

I know better than that. The following is an excerpt from Senator Khol’s automated response to Liberty Tree’s email:

I oppose drilling for oil and gas in the ANWR because of the irreparable damage that would be done to its fragile ecosystem.

Senator Khol, it seems, is a true believer in environmentalism, a topic I blogged on just the other day. But that is not all! Kohl continues:

I co-sponsored Senator Lieberman’s (I-CT) bill, S. 2316, which was introduced on November 7, 2007 that would designate a portion of the ANWR as a wilderness, placing a permanent ban on development (italics mine)

Sounds to me like Senator Kohl is a humanity hater in the first degree. Heaven help us if we actually developed something– we might interfere with an ecosystem! Sounds like we need a permanent ban to make sure no productive individuals slip through the cracks and start… developing… (insert Senator Kohl’s evil laugh…)

By now, you the reader must be wondering: what about Kohl could be so bad that I would desecrate his name with a post title? Well, Kohl has earned my ire just by virtue of the fact that he is the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Kohl’s contribution to the business of government mainly consists of wrecking the American economy with harmful regulations of business, while attempting to justify his useless, bureaucratic position by holding hearings on things that few care about, but for which all have to pay. Kohl’s record is so long, and shows so much promise for continued growth, that I’m starting a category dedicated solely to him called Kohl Watch; every time he does or says something stupid, I’ll be sure to blog on it. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Some of you are probably aware that last month, Senator Kohl, along with the rest of his gang of thugs, publicly made a mockery of the United States Government when they demanded to know what oil company executives had to say for themselves, insisting that they defend their right to their own, freely earned profits, what George Reisman, noted economist, called an interrogation of the innocent by the guilty. The high point of this sham of a proceeding was by far and away when Khol made an utter fool of himself, lashing out at the VP of Chevron, screeching:

People listening just don’t get it … when demand isn’t going crazy, why are prices going crazy?

The stupidity is almost palpable. Demand is not the problem at all; just ask David O’Reilly, chairman of Chevron:

On the supply side, there’s still a lot of concern. The world isn’t running out of resources — the biggest risk for expanding production is restricting access to new developments.

Herbert Kohl has been complaining about the profits of Big Oil for years– since he was elected in 1989. Talk about a hatred of the good for being good. What he doesn’t mention– what nobody cares to mention, in fact– is that with all the tax on oil in the United States, the government actually gets more money per gallon than oil companies. Unbelievable, but true, and it doesn’t stop there. Congress has also slowed the import of clean ethanol by imposing hefty tariffs on the imports from Brazil in order to “protect American jobs.” If by “protecting American jobs” you mean eliminating market competitors for fossil fuels, thereby forcing us all to pay more for gas, then you’re doing a great job, Congress. What about nuclear energy? You know, the cleanest, safest form of energy ever discovered by man? No, no serious talk of that in 20 years… I know! We can really stick it to the evil oil companies by riding our bikes to work like we live in Columbia! Come on, people.

If they really wanted to lower gas prices, they’d cut the taxes, and open up the restricted areas. But they won’t. They want the prices to be high so they can foster a positive public sentiment about their Marxist agenda to nationalize the US oil refineries.

You see. In the end, its all about empowering the weak at the expense of the productive. Don’t buy into their nonsense. If you’re an oil company executive, and you’re reading this, please shrug.

Gay marriage is one of those fluffy, football issues that I usually try to avoid at all costs. But seeing as how it was legalized in California just yesterday, and since it is one of the first issues I am asked to comment on whenever discussing policy with the average Joe (or Jane), I will comment on it here, and I will do so in a composed tone of finality that I reserve only for things that I wish never to discuss again.

When considering the question of gay marriage, there are two popularly accepted positions in the marketplace of ideas:

There are those who would have gay marriage completely legalized, with homosexuals retaining the full legal rights that straight couples now enjoy; in the most practical sense, these individuals would like gay couples to be able to obtain a marriage license with the same ease as a straight couple. This is the view generally held by liberals, and is therefore the viewpoint of most everyone I know and converse with on a regular basis.

On the other side of the fence, there is a movement to rid the country of the marriage of gay couples by means of a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. This would be entirely accurate according to every cited definition on Dictionary.com, and thats a lot of citations. This position is commonly held by the religious right, as well as by the politicians that attempt to appeal to and appease them. Pictured right is the notorious Baptist pastor Fred Phelps, arguably the most vocal (and assuredly the most controversial) activist in the campaign to end what he views as a morally reprehensible bastardization of a sacrament of God.

Both of these views are wrong, and it is truly a sad statement about the political culture in the United States that these positions are accepted to be opposites, when, in reality, they have more in common than not. The first platform mentioned above seems to be the position of most people today; they declare that they stand for equality, for “gay rights,” as well as many other abstract platitudes that are essentially meaningless. There is no real label that you can place on these individuals, because they come from a broad political spectrum. Yes, there are gay conservatives who fall under this umbrella too, like this blogger, who goes by the name of GayPatriot; he is a conservative, and he seems downright sensible when it comes to most things, writing in one post:

The greatest enemies of gay people are not social conservatives in the West who may question (what they call) our lifestyle and oppose legislation benefiting us, but Islamic theocrats who execute gay people in jurisdictions where they predominate and seek to destroy the nations with political systems which allow us to live freely.

However, in a completely different post, he advocates for the same position on gay marriage that is usually held by liberals. So we can’t call everyone in favor of gay marriage liberal– not all of them are, as you can see. The only word that can be used to describe them is statist. What are they really after when they demand the right to get married?

They’re after marriage licenses. A little piece of paper issued by the State that says: Joe Shmo and John Doe are married now, because the State so decrees. That’s all. Surely this is not the sacred rite that religious nut-jobs like Phelps have sworn to defend. Surely, all this fuss couldn’t be over a little piece of paper, could it? Just what is a license, anyway? According to Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary , a “license” is

a formal permission from the proper authorities to perform certain acts or to carry on a certain business, which without such permission would be illegal.

It would be illegal for you to get married if the State didn’t give you permission first. The argument that gays, lesbians and their sympathizers are currently having with the religious right is based on an entirely false premise. They should not be saying what they are saying, which is something to the effect of: “Please, Mommy State, let me and my lover get married, it would be so kind of you if you let us! Pleeeeease,” they should be saying, “Government, unless I am initiating the use of force against another person, it isn’t your business what I do. Ever. And if I want to get married, its between the person I’m marrying, the person marrying us, and me. That’s it. I don’t want your marriage ‘license,’ and I certainly do not need it to make a promise to someone that I will be with them and only them, forever.”

This attitude should not be isolated to gays and lesbians, it should be the attitude of all adults. As a society we need to reexamine our ideas about marriage, and what it means. Instead of asking ourselves, “Should the government allow these two individuals to form a union together?”, we should be asking, “Should the government ever have a say in the private affairs of individuals for any reason?” The answer, of course, is an emphatic no.

Frame the issue in terms of economics. If two people voluntarily choose to engage in trade with one another, it is no one’s business but their own. What they are trading, and how much they want for it can be decided by no one but them, since only they can accurately determine of how much value any given thing is to them. Whatever arrangement they come to in the end is a private matter, not to be regulated interfered with by anyone, and that includes the government. That’s nice, isn’t it? But how does it relate to marriage as a legal institution?

All voluntary human relations are trades, exactly like the one mentioned in the previous paragraph. Take the following as an example: one man sees value in another man, and believes that his own life would be benefited in some way by that man’s presence in it, and so he seeks to spend time with him. If the second man, in turn, sees value in the first, he will (probably) enter into a relationship of some kind with him. Both these individuals find the relationship to be beneficial, otherwise they would not participate in it; they would seek elsewhere. The conditions of their relationship are theirs to decide, and cannot rationally be determined by anyone other than them, since they are the only ones who can accurately determine of how much value they are to one other. Like any other mutually voluntary trade, it is their private matter, and it is not to be regulated, approved or disapproved of, considered, or even acknowledged by the government. This means that when two people, seeing great value in one another, decide that they would like to make their relationship permanent and monogamous, and they come to an agreement, a contract, if you will, about the conditions of that that relationship, the government not only does not have the right to regulate, sanction, and/or approve of said contract, but any regulation, sanction, or approval would be unnecessary in the extreme, for such a contract already has all the authority it needs: the sanction of willing participants. By issuing (or not issuing) a marriage license to the individuals in question, the government is implicitly stating that it can determine the value and legitimacy of the marriage better than those involved, and by allowing the government to do this, the individuals in question are admitting, not only to themselves, but to the world, that they need the government’s sanction on their marriage, because their own is not enough to make it legitimate.

What about divorce, you say? There would be no way to divorce someone if the government doesn’t regulate the institution of marriage, you say? Poppycock, says I. If a willing participant in a contract chooses to void it, the terms of severance are (or at least, they should be) stipulated within the contract itself. If someone does not abide by these stipulations, it is then the proper role of government to enforce them. This would be the case with any business contract between individuals. Marriage should not be an exception.

Remember that the government’s only claim to existence is the protection of its citizens from those who would force them to act against what they believe to be their best interests, or: the initiation of force. The government should, therefore, hold no power whatsoever over those who do not initiate its use. This, of course, means that the “opposite” of the liberal platform on gay marriage is not an opposite position at all, it is just another variant on the same statist measures of control over individual’s lives– which brings me back to the purpose of this post.

The fact that we are presented with two different forms of statist control over the lives of private individuals as opposites– one of them upholding “moral values,” the other upholding “equality”– while neither of them are upholding anything but the destruction of the human spirit, along with the fact that the only issues that seem to be important to anyone these days are issues such as this, is a sad reflection on the political culture of America today. You can blame the mainstream media all you want, but the media is the effect, not he cause of the problem, which is something much deeper. I believe that the root cause of our culture’s current state is that Americans– all Americans, irrespective of party leaning, irrespective of any racial, economic, or any other kind distinction that you can draw between human beings– (for the most part) have no driving philosophy that guides their lives. Most hold no real standard for what is good and evil. Is it any wonder that we have such pragmatic politicians, like John McCain and Barack Obama, men who, unable to stand on any real principles, value compromise above what is right and wrong? It isn’t them, its us, America. Like the media, politicians appeal to what they think you want to hear. If one were to listen to either of these men talk for even ten minutes with this premise in mind, one would come to the conclusion that Americans don’t want to be too liberal– and they definitely don’t want to be too conservative. Americans want to play for both teams, it seems. The only problem is that the teams that they are playing for are owned by the same company: Serfdom INC., and every game is rigged. No matter who wins, we lose. Soon, Americans are going to have to realize that it isn’t about “left” versus “right,” its about right versus wrong; it isn’t about “liberal” versus “conservative,” its about freedom versus slavery.

We reap what we sow, America, and until we, as a nation, really examine our lives and our values, until we stand up for the culture of our heritage, the culture of our founding fathers, the culture of independence, of freedom, of the rule of law, we will continue to earn presidential candidates like Obama, and presidents like George Bush, and this cultural famine will not stop. It will kill us, and there’ll be grass growing in the streets.

Later.

Tonight, my girlfriend and I decided to go see The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest train wreck of a film. Not only was the acting and the plot development poor, it didn’t make any sense– and worst of all, by the end, the film reveals itself to be nothing more than a piece of crass, anti-humanist environmentalist propaganda.

The film revolves around a man named Elliot and his wife, who are trying to flee from an apparent biochemical terrorist attack in the form of a toxin in the air, which, when people are exposed to it, causes them to kill themselves in unusual and gruesome ways. We soon find that it is not a terrorist attack at all, but a pesticide released into the air by plants— all plants. Apparently, the plants become sensitized and release the pesticide when large groups of people come near. The audience is left utterly clueless as to why all of this is happening until the very end of the film, when (after the event mysteriously ends) a scientist speculates that the plants were taking defensive measures to wipe out a virus that was infecting them, and is infecting them still— humanity.

This kind of attitude about human kind does not exist in isolation within this film; this anti-human sentiment has existed for years in the Ecology movement, and it is not a laughing matter. There are serious groups dedicated to the extinction of humanity– some of them are passive, like the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which says on its website that an earth without humans

sounds like paradise, doesn’t it? …Without us meddlesome humans, all other species would get their fair chance at survival.

They ask us to

envision an impossible dream: all human sperm suddenly and permanently loses viability - no impregnated human egg begins meiosis to form a zygote - none transforms from embryo into the sacred fetus, is carried to term and sentenced to life. Zero conceptions, wanted or un.

In their defense, the VHEM only calls for what they call a “voluntary extinction” which means no forced population control, no nuclear weapons, no mass graves; they simply want us all to stop breeding, and they want us to do it right now. But these crazy folks are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hatred of mankind.

In April of 2006, Professor Eric R. Pianka, noted ecologist, gave a speech (to a packed audience, no less) in which he called for the extermination of 90% of humans now living with an airborne Ebola virus. No further comment is needed.

The entire driving philosophy behind environmentalism is flawed, and must be checked. Environmentalists believe that nature is an end in and of itself, that it must be upheld and protected above all else. This is why some of them (the ones that are consistent, anyway) will say things like, “You’re looking at the world with a humanity bias,” which means, of course, that you are brutish and selfish for valuing human life above a tree frog or dirt. If we accept that nature is good because it is nature, and for no other reason, it makes sense to desire human extinction; such a desire is merely taking the saying “Leave the Smallest Footprint Possible” to heart. Man survives by manipulating the environment to suit his needs– there is no other way. If we accept that we should leave the smallest impact on the world as possible, why not just wipe ourselves out?

The environment is not an end in and of itself, it is only an end so long as it serves human ends. I want clean air, not because I love the earth goddess and want to see her restored to her natural state, not because of some nebulous responsibility that I feel I have for nature, but because I like clean air, it feels good in my lungs, and it serves as a major value for me to be able to breathe. I want clean water for similar reasons. I want trees around, because I know that, instead of attacking me and forcing me to commit suicide as M. Night Shyamalan would have it, they produce Oxygen for me to breathe, and as I said above, I consider breathing to be important to me. But I will not stop myself from cutting down trees to make room for my house for any reason other than that those trees are, for whatever reason, of more value to me than the house. I refuse to act in discordance with my values, and so should you.

Proclaim once and for all that your own life, not nature, is your standard of what is good and evil, and renounce environmentalism forever.