John Adams: Virtue Is The Foundation Of A Free Constitution

John Adams

From the desk of John Adams:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. … The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People. … [T]hey may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. … A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

C. S. Lewis On Tyranny

C. S. Lewis

Quoting British author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963):

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

False Climate Science

From the pen of Dr. Tim Ball:

All the scares generated by the false climate science promoted by political agendas disappear from the mainstream media and are rarely heard of again. There’s no follow up in the mainstream media, no apologies for providing false or inadequate information.

Nasty old Mother Nature causes the demise by going about her normal business. As the old advertisement said, it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature. The Northern Hemisphere winter is already proving once again that global warming is another undelivered government promise.

Continue reading. . . .

Junk Science And Climate

The recent global warming scandal was riddled with deliberate deception and imaginative propaganda that CO2 was causing harm to our planet. This led to completely unnecessary and devastating economic policies. Billions of dollars have been unnecessarily wasted on climate change programs. The world was deliberately deceived. The climate hucksters succeeded because they attacked anyone who dared to question them. They got away with it because the experts who knew better also knew it was all about access to government grants and were intimidated into silence. They got away with it because no-one wanted to point out that the emperor was nude. The human impact caused by trying to turn America into a third rate economic power was ignored. The global warming lobby held sway in the halls of Congress and so anti-business and anti-jobs were the constant themes of legislation on Capital Hill. Dr. Tim Ball writes:

How can they get away with such incredible arrogance and deception? Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres of the UN Framework Convention on Climate (UNFCC) said “Let me be clear – there is no magic bullet, no one climate agreement that will solve everything right now,” “To expect that is naive. However, I am certain the world can do this step by step, but only if we keep on walking firmly in the right direction, including at Cancun.” She is talking about stopping or controlling climate change. Clearly Ms. Figueres knows nothing about climate science or doesn’t want to know.

There is nothing to solve except how the world was deceived that humans are the sole cause of climate change and therefore it can be controlled. It’s a delusion of modern, technologically, and bureaucratically arrogant people. She should know the cost of the delusion that human CO2 is causing climate change has produced. How people are being subjected to serious social and economic harm that borders on atrocities. Maybe her degree in anthropology would help her resolve this and other resulting issues. Maybe she could explain how a group of people who falsified data, practiced inaccurate and inadequate science, convinced governments to introduce completely unnecessary and harmful policies, and fooled the Nobel Committee into giving them a Peace Prize. To call what they did a contribution to peace is an intellectual farce. But it is not a farce to consider that it appears to fit the definition of Crimes against Humanity. Mass atrocities are organized crimes whose perpetrators need money, weapons, transportation, and other means to commit widespread and systematic violence against civilians. A country, commercial entity, or individual enables mass atrocities when it provides resources, goods, services, or other practical support to the perpetrator, and when this support is a critical ingredient in the commission of the atrocities.

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Ethanol Is No Longer A “Sacred Cow”

Al Gore has long been known for lauding the virtues of ethanol. He even cast the tie-breaking vote as vice president to subsidize ethanol producers. “Global Warming” Al, however, now says his support for ethanol was a “mistake.” He now claims that his mistake was influenced by what the farmers of his home state wanted. The result of his vote was to impose an ethanol subsidy that added nearly $5 billion to the federal deficit last year alone. Gore commented that, “It’s hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.” In other words, it looks like Americans will continue to pay for an ethanol development program that cannot achieve the purpose for which it was created.

Learn more here. . . .

The Media’s Double Standard And Al Gore

There are still those who cling to the great global warming hoax as if it were a life raft in the middle of an ocean. The only problem is that the life raft is sinking and its passengers are ignoring the problem. Columnist Burt Prelutsky writes:

“It is mainly liberals who are the simpletons who took up global warming as a cause and made a god of Al Gore, ignoring the fact that Gore was making millions of dollars off the hoax. You would think that left-wingers, especially the many atheists in their ranks, would question a god who not only made a fortune out of his holy mission, but refused to debate the issue and only spoke to true believers. And how is it that the same people who so eagerly point out the big homes, the fancy jewelry and all the other signs of religious hypocrisy for which televangelists are noted, aren’t the least bit skeptical of Mr. Gore? Apparently if a televangelist like Gore talks about the weather, instead of the hereafter, liberals not only don’t denounce him as a fraud, they give him the left-wing trifecta: an Emmy, an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize. Liberals pay no attention to the fact that when a few people actually noticed that the earth and the oceans were cooling, Gore and his pet ‘scientists’ quickly began referring to ‘climate change’ and eventually to ‘global climate disruption.’ It didn’t matter to them if things were heating up or cooling down; all that really mattered was that they had a cause and could use it as a way to butt their way into everybody’s business. Now we have those lousy light bulbs to contend with.”

Democrats Continue To Push Their Liberal Spending Agenda

It looks like the Democrats will introduce the mother of all budget bills by lumping together all the appropriations bills they had failed to pass for fiscal year 2011, which began on October 1. The omnibus package costs $1.1 trillion. Democrats had ducked funding the government all year, fearing the backlash from spending-conscious voters. The government is currently running on a stopgap expenditure that expires Dec. 2. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has announced his opposition.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will once again try to slip energy legislation through the Senate under a new name: the Promoting Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles Act of 2010. The bill is nothing but pork, including $4.5 billion in tax incentives for purchasing automobiles powered by natural gas or electricity and subsidies for the production of such vehicles. Another $1.5 billion is thrown in for further research and development in this area. How will the government pay for it? It will all be “paid for” by tripling the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund tax. The tax will mean even less oil exploration in U.S. territory and higher gas prices for consumers. Numerous economic and scientific studies have revealed that there is not, nor will there be, any real demand for these vehicles over the next decade. If there were demand, there would be no need for federal subsidies. Reid continues to through good money after bad in order to please his favorite lobbyists.

A Revolutionary Season In American Politics

 

Lew Rockwell

 

American politics has an educational value all its own if there is anything positive to be said about it at all. Elections encourage people to focus their minds and therefore, become more knowledgeable of what the politicians are actually doing in Washington. Perhaps, this time, Americans have learned that they cannot just wait till every election year rolls around to become involved in how we are being governed.  Lew Rockwell, who is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and the author of Speaking of Liberty, writes that:

It’s another revolutionary season in American politics, with voters preparing to do everything they can within the structure of the law to throw out the bad guys and the bad system they represent. The focus is on this amorphous thing called the Tea Party, which embodies a huge range of political impulses from libertarian to authoritarian, united under the common belief that everything is going wrong in Washington, with a common goal of upending the status quo. . . .

The health-care bill is also a source of American public anger. People are not deceived into believing that whatever reforms we are getting are going to fix the problems of the current system; they will make them worse. As it is, the freedom remaining in the system is the only reason that the system serves us at all. Take that away, and you take away a lifeline.

The revolt, then, is in high gear. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. The governed have long been very unhappy about the government, and they periodically wake up and seek to change it. It’s been some 16 years since the last go-round of such revolutionary sentiment. It is arguably stronger today than it was back in 1994.

The good aspects of this have nothing to do with political outcomes, despite what people believe. The political environment focuses the mind on important issues like freedom, economics, culture, power and its uses, and the role of the state. As they debate with their neighbors, follow election coverage, listen to the candidates, and watch the process, people learn and study and, most importantly, think and rethink.

If you begin with a skeptical attitude toward the government, watching and thinking can lead to a radicalization and ultimate embrace of a consistent opposition to government involvement. This is why election season always ends up creating a huge flood of new libertarians who buy books, feel the inspiration to get active (perhaps for the first time), and dedicate themselves to reducing the power of the state in whatever way they can.

Continue reading. . . .

Is Government By An Elite Group Superior To Government For, By, And Of The People?

Tower of Babel

Quoting Ronald Reagan:

“The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.”

Say Goodbye To Steaks And Burgers

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided it can ban dust. What has this got to do with steaks and hamburgers? This ban is directed at farmers and ranchers. Evidently, our secular-progressive bureaucrats think cows create too much dust when they walk.

This outrageous EPA regulation appears to be aimed at destroying the cattle industry in the US. Just as the EPA has helped to regulate our country into dependence on foreign oil, it is now trying to make us dependent on foreign beef. This policy represents the radical environmentalists’ anti-animal agriculture agenda. These people think you should only be able to eat veggie-burgers.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that this ban will not only eliminate the average person’s ability to afford an occasional steak for dinner, it will eliminate more jobs at a time when unemployment is already a major problem.

Dumb Climate Public Relations Idea

Environmental crusaders claim to want a more kumbayah world, but they’re apparently willing to advocate the most hideous violence to achieve it. A British climate fear group called the 10:10 Campaign is advocating that everyone cut their carbon emissions by 10 percent. To illustrate, they produced a video depicting a teacher leading her class in brainstorming for ideas. When two students react indifferently, the teacher shrugs it off, saying, “No pressure,” but then nonchalantly pushes a button, blowing up the two children.

As Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto explains, “The ‘crime’ for which the children in the video are ‘executed’ is one of omission, not commission. They are murdered not even for dissenting against 10:10’s political crusade, but merely for being indifferent to it. This is the essence of totalitarianism.” This theme is repeated three more times in other contexts, all with adults.

Lame-Ducks Can Be Expensive

 

Jim Demint

 

It’s been reported that Democrats are considering as many as 20 pieces of legislation to bring up for a vote during the lame-duck session following this election.  This must not happen.  We must stop Congress from wasting billions of dollars on pork-barrel projects.  Jim Demint writes:

Some companies have a policy that once someone is fired, they aren’t allowed back on the premises out of fear they might do further damage to the company. It’s too bad Congress doesn’t have the same policy. Because before they’re replaced in January, all of the Democrats who are put out of a job in November will be able to come back and rob the nation blind.

More than a dozen senators will come back to Washington and decide how much more tax money to take from Americans, without being accountable to any of them. Higher taxes, cap-and-trade, amnesty, and card check will be top-priority items for the Fired Congress, otherwise known as the lame-duck Congress. They’re also likely to roll unfinished appropriations bills into a massive, pork-stuffed omnibus to snag every last possible earmark on their way out of Washington.

Continue reading. . . .

Al’s Academy Award Should Have Been For Science Fiction

The global warming hoax really grew wings when former Vice President Al Gore’s wildly inaccurate propaganda-horror film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was presented to world-wide audiences. Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary convinced many people of a global warming doomsday scenario. It was a classic example of the power of the movie and television screen to become the purveyor of propaganda to manipulate us into voting for a purely secular progressive agenda. John Nolte writes:

At a gut level most left-wing environmentalists know that they’re liars. Intellectually they might have somehow convinced themselves that Mother Earth is in some sort of man-made peril, but deep down inside where the truth won’t be denied, these liars know they’re lying — know that the “green movement” is all about a sinister political agenda to put them in the position of insect overlords in charge of we rubes who stubbornly refuse to let go of the idea that Marxism is a bad thing.

This isn’t true for all of them. Ed Begley Jr. walks the walk, and there are everyday tree-huggers scattered throughout America quietly attempting to make work a sustainable lifestyle. You can smell them from here. But most environmentalists are lying liars who know they’re lying. Because if you honestly believe man is destroying the planet, that the apocalypse is nigh, you prepare for it. Most coastal elites are Global Warming believers and yet Global Warming, we’re told, will make the oceans rise to the point that will someday put much of the coast, especially Manhattan underwater. So why aren’t coastal elites moving inland? Why aren’t they pulling a Lex Luthor and buying up all that cheap property that will someday be the new coast? And why do they continue to burn fossil fuels, enjoy air conditioning, and otherwise consume? Because deep down inside they know what we know: it’s all *#<^ #>\% Socialism disguised as nonsense.

Continue reading. . . .

More Climate Fraud Discovered

An investigation into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming. Basically, there is little proof for their wild assertions.

Climate change skeptic David Holland, who challenged leading climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia to disclose their research, believes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is definitely not fit for its purpose.

The IAC said: “The IPCC needs to reform its management structure and strengthen its procedures to handle ever larger and increasingly complex climate assessments as well as the more intense public scrutiny coming from a world grappling with how to respond to climate change.”

The review also cast doubt on the future of IPCC chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri. The Daily Express reported how he had no climate science qualifications. Dr Pachauri has also been accused of a conflict of interest, after it emerged that he has business interests attracting millions of pounds in funding.

Read more about this subject. . . .

No Objective Debate Of Global Warming Allowed In Public Schools

In Beverly Hills, California, 6th grader Sam Besserman says he and his classmates have been taught only one side of the global warming debate since they were in kindergarten. He’s harassed at school by kids who call him stupid for questioning the teaching. His mom says he feels shut out and isolated. For more about what’s going on in the schools, please go to http://www.balanced-ed.org and http://www.noteviljustwrong.com.