Our rights do not originate with government, but they are to be "secured" by government.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Insanity of the Left is Destroying Success

By Tom Rhodes, 9/27/2017

“A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” ~ Samuel Adams Feb. 12, 1779

Voicing the very same ideas that founding father Samuel Adams stated over 200 years ago, Pennsylvania Law Professor Amy Wax gave a lecture, titled “Diverging Family Structure by Class and Race: Economic Hardship, Moral Deregulation or Something Else?” She noted that despite what they may say, the upper middle class and most successful people exhibit 50's era traditional Christian morals, and that the less a group of people embrace "bourgeois culture,” the less prosperous they are.

She presented statistical data that supported the fact that those who embrace our old moral traditions tend to be more successful than those who don't. She summarized the successful behaviors of "bourgeois culture” as, "Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime."

This reads remarkably similar to Economists Dr. Walter Williams and Dr. Thomas Sowell's repeated editorials noting that if you complete high school, get a job, get married, and have kids, in that order you dramatically reduce the chance of living in poverty.

For over 200 years the message, by example, of successful people, has been that adhering to traditional Christian virtues is the most successful way to pursue happiness. It's almost as if God gave us the Commandments not for His sake, but for ours. Evidence that the Bible is the "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth."

Is it a coincidence that those who love liberty generally embrace bourgeois culture, and those who seek to silence ideas they don’t like, and force others to conform, and in general support a tyrannical powerful government, reject bourgeois culture? The insanity of the left, attacking hard work and self-discipline, and bourgeois culture, is self-evident. The vitriol and hatred leftists have exhibited to Professor Wax, and the left’s general attack on our liberties seems proportional to their rejection of virtues, clearly demonstrating that Sam Adams was right. The question is, why does the left tear down the very values that evidence indicates are those which bring prosperity, and happiness?

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Climate Alarmism, A Religious Tenant of Totalitarian Leftists

By Tom Rhodes, 9/19/2017

For people on the left, left-wing issues are not political issues; they are religious issues. Consider global warming. To leftists it is an existential issue. The reason they want to criminally charge those don't accept man is causing catastrophic climate change is those who oppose their beliefs are heretics. The atheistic left is even more devout in their condemnation of heretical views. Any science or research that doesn't support their religious view of man being bad and earth being good must not be allowed. The failure of all the "scientific" models in temperature predictions is not a repudiation of their beliefs. The failure of virtually every prediction they have made concerning climate over the past 50 years is irrelevant, just as is the failure of all of the predictions of Armageddon made by religious zealots doesn’t diminish the faith of believers. They have faith that man is causing the destruction of the earth and therefore man’s actions should be controlled and limited by the enlightened, and no amount of facts will sway their faith.

Man-caused climate change is questioned because there is indisputable scientific evidence this isn’t the Earth’s first rodeo when it comes to cyclical cooling and warming. The Earth experienced periods of glaciation followed by melting long before Leonardo DiCaprio’s excessive use of private jets and the construction of Al Gore’s energy devouring Nashville dream home. The statistical reality is man's contribution to climate change is so smaller than the margin of error in the analysis we can do. But that doesn't fit into the religious beliefs of the left.

A primary tenant of leftists is that humans are a bad evil force that is harming mother nature. Katie Herzog at Grist.com clearly and plainly stated this religious tenant of leftism, writing on January 16, 2015, “If this planet is to survive the scourge that is humanity, we all have to stop reproducing. Yes, all of us. In that spirit, I propose we … sterilize every human male on his 10th birthday.” Granted most leftists don’t go to this absurd extreme, but then most Christians didn’t follow Jim Jones and drink the Kool-Aid either.

Climate Alarmism is a tenant of leftist faith and the left is zealous about it to the point of extremism, like Islamist they will use violence and seek to criminalize criticism of their faith. Like Islamists they seek to dehumanize all who don’t share their belief, so that they can feel no guilt to murdering, attacking, condemning, and taking away the rights of non-believers. Whom they feel don’t have the same rights because they are less than human. The call to punish “climate change deniers” is the lefts religious zealotry to gain control of our lives.

The United Nations (via UNEP), is pushing international judges to criminalize any climate change belief contrary to their own. Professor Richard Parncutt has called for the execution of prominent “GW deniers.” Climate Progress Editor Joe Romm called for deniers to be strangled in their beds. James Hansen, who has headed NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has likewise called for trials of global warming deniers. There is a very long list, going back decades, of leftists wanting to silence scientists and other heretics who dare question their beliefs.

The hue and cry to control us all, was once the imminent ice age, they it was called global warming, but because the climate didn’t freeze as predicted, then didn’t warm as predicted, and storms didn’t increase as predicted, etc. etc. etc., they changed their refrain from global warming to climate change. The climate change agenda is a desperate effort to gain greater control over our lives. As political commentator Henry Louis Mencken explained “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Leftists in their religious zeal have want the power to control the lives of others whom they feel should live as they dictate and not be given the liberty to examine the evidence and live and do what they think will best provide happiness.

Leftists religiously oppose the foundations of the USA and reject the idea that government was instituted by the mere people to protect their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They believe leftists by virtue of their superior intellect and compassion, should be able to dictate how the masses should live. Hence they seek to kill and outlaw and silence heretics that would dare question their beliefs. They are no better than Islamic terrorists, who kill those who question or criticize their beliefs.