The Middle is Always Evil

Dear Exxon Mobil Executives,

Yesterday, you made public your quarterly earnings, setting a record for the biggest profit in the history of the United States: 11.68 billion billion dollars. Over the next few weeks (and quite possibly over the next few years), you should expect to get a lot of flak from Washington, as well as the American public, about how you have made an “unfair profit;” they’ll tell you that the money that you’ve made rightfully belongs to somebody else. Just today, Barack Obama has said that he thinks your profits should be divided up and given to the American public– but did they earn those profits? No!

This is the United States of America, the greatest country in the history of civilized men. Here, each man is entitled to the sweat of his own brow, to the products of his labor. I am proud to live in a country where a corporation has earned as much as yours has; I consider it a great honor. Gentlemen, when the entire country comes to you demanding a share of your wealth, do not capitulate. Do not give in to their threats, or their corrupt moral code that demands that you do. Do not accept guilt for living on this earth, or the way that you have chosen to do so. Do not listen to them.

And when you are called before Congress to testify for your crimes against the American public, this is what you tell them:

I work for nothing but my own profit – which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage – and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with – voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product. I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people – the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbours and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologise for my ability – I refuse to apologise for my success – I refuse to apologise for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code – and I will accept no other. I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow men than you can ever hope to accomplish – but I will not say it, because I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognise the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work – my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good – that nobody’s good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices – that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the right of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation – as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won’t. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own – I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!”

I am proud of what you Gentlemen have achieved, not because of the “public service” that you have provided, but because of the virtue that it requires to achieve it. You are heroes; do not give in.

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.