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GLOBAL WARMING – LEFT’S LATEST EXCUSE FOR THE WAR ON THE FAMILY By Don Feder Posted: May 10. 2008 PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION(.pdf)
Procreation is killing the planet, and traditional religion is to blame, Global-Warming cultists insist.
First the industrial revolution had to go. Then it was to the wall with oil company executives, those malignant Carbon Interests. Next, SUVs were declared enemies of the planet.
Now, the left’s attention has shifted back to its perennial targets – large families and “patriarchal” religion.
In a commentary in the April 21st. edition of USATODAY (“Might our religion be killing us?”), Oliver “Buzz” Thomas quotes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- a tool of the global village idiots at the United Nations -- to the effect that Global Warming, caused by CO2 emissions, will lead to “drought, starvation and species extinction.” (Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies ... rivers and seas boiling… forty years of darkness… dogs and cats living together!)
The culprits are religions that oppose birth control and abortion and instruct us regarding fructification and multiplication. Thomas even names names: “Now, consider the Roman Catholic Church’s continued opposition to modern birth control or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ (i.e. Mormons) encouragement of large families … . Many Orthodox Jews and some Muslims also eschew birth control.”
Only “some Muslims”? Bet Planned Parenthood isn’t doing a land –office business in Mecca.
These benighted faiths are literally drowning us in kids, causing CO2-levels to rise, the hole in the ozone-layer to grow, and polar bears to float away on break-away chunks of the rapidly shrinking Arctic ice cap.
But, what can you expect from churches mired in a literal reading of Scriptures? Thomas asks. “I recognize that religious organizations tend to be conservative institutions. Their continued opposition to equal rights for woman and gays is a good example.”
By failing to ordain women and opposing abortion and homosexual marriage, conservative denominations prove their resistance to progress and human rights, Buzz sneers.
Said reactionary tendencies also are evident in their callous disregard for the environment. (For the left, the quintessential spiritual experience would be an abortion performed at a same-sex marriage ceremony, while transgendered ushers throw condoms instead of confetti, and bridesmaids confiscate handguns from passersby.)
Says Thomas: “In the interest of preserving our planet and our species, shouldn’t religious organizations be encouraging smaller families? Do our spiritual leaders need additional divine revelation to realize that our current doctrines – which threaten to take the entire world down with us – have become ethically and theologically questionable?”
Welcome to the Church of Choice – services performed by the Reverend Rodham, Sundays at 9 and 11.
For 200 years, the left has been fixated on an imaginary overpopulation crisis. In 1798, Thomas Malthus warned that wars, famine and plagues were needed to reduce the “surplus population” else we would soon inhabit Planet SRO.
In his 1969 book, “The Population Bomb” (the prequel to “An Inconvenient Truth”), Paul Ehrlich forecast worldwide famine by 1975. Natural resources would be severely depleted and arable land exhausted in a futile effort to keep up with the population explosion. Soon, we would be reduced to eating each other -- like Democratic presidential candidates in late April of an election year.
That none of these doomsday scenarios came to pass is irrelevant to the left. Hysteria is the only way to propagate their creed. The Today Show’s Matt Lauer insists: “The stark reality is that there are too many of us. And we consume too much … The solutions are not a secret: control population, recycle, reduce consumption.” Spoken like a TV personality feigning an idea.
How many people are too many? They never tell us. As Dr. Jacqueline Kasun noted in “The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control” (1998), humans occupy 1% to 3% of the earth’s land surface.
A decade ago, all 5.8 billion of us could have fit in the state of Texas, with each having 1,269 square feet of living-space – the equivalent of a ranch house.
Since 1900, the world’s population has quadrupled, while the planet’s GDP has increased between 20 and 40 times.
In 1960, India had to import food to deal with periodic famines. Today, with twice the population it had then, India is a net food exporter. Worldwide, half as many people die of starvation today as in 1900, even though we have four times as many people. Those who starve to death now are mostly victims of government-engineered famine.
A 1990 report of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that by employing what were then the most up-to-date technologies, the earth could yield enough to feed 30 to 35 billion.
So, we’re not running out of food or space. How about natural resources? In 1948, the world’s oil reserves were estimated at around 600 billion barrels. By 2000, the estimate was revised slightly upward – to 3 trillion barrels. The actual figure is anyone’s guess.
Having failed with the foregoing, the left now has hit on what it believes to be the ultimate strategy to advance population control – Global Warming. Families are about to feel the blade of the guillotine in the coming Green Terror.
In May, 2007, an outfit called the Optimum Population Trust warned that if the British didn’t voluntarily limit population size, it would be up to the state to force them to be environmentally conscious in the bedroom. (FYI, in the U.K., the birth rate is well-below replacement level.) The Trust warned that the average lifetime “carbon footprint” of a child born in Britain was the equivalent of 620 roundtrip flights between London and New York.
Last December, Barry Walters, an associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia, urged the government in Canberra to levy a $5,000 “baby tax” and an annual $800 “carbon tax,” for each addition child born to a family with two children. All of the left’s crusades begin with proselytizing and end in coercion.
“Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society,” Walters writes. The left is incapable of viewing individuals as anything other than polluters, never as producers or innovators – let alone seeing them in spiritual terms, as manifestations of God’s goodness.
Global Warming is the left’s perfect storm – a force to demolish faith, family and freedom. There’s no area of our lives that can’t be invaded – taxed, controlled, regulated or obliterated – in the name of serving and protecting the planet.
Unlike food production and oil reserves, the myth of man-made Global Warming is resistant to factual analysis. The left treats it as revealed truth and skeptics are scorned as heretics and troglodytes – the scientific equivalent of Holocaust-deniers. Al Gore, the movement’s P.T. Barnum-cum-Grand Inquisitor, compares them to the cranks who believe the earth is flat.
If Global Warming didn’t exist, the left would have to invent it. In fact, they did. As Nigel Calder, former editor of the British magazine New Scientist explains: “Twenty years ago, climate research became politicized in favor of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the study as the effect of the study of greenhouse gasses. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers.”
Still, the evidence is there for those not blinded by dogma. Al Gore’s brain is melting faster than the Arctic ice cap, which is making a spectacular comeback.
A February 18, 2008 story in the London Daily Express notes that Arctic ice levels, which had shrunk from 13 million to 4 million sq. km., between January and October 2007, are now almost back to their original levels. In the meantime, according to the paper, “Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year.”
In New England, I spent much of the past winter shoveling Global Warming.
The entire Northern Hemisphere experienced the coldest winter in decades. Again, from the Daily Express: “Even the Middle East saw snow, with Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman and northern Saudi Arabia reporting the heaviest falls in years and below zero temperatures. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, snow and freezing weather killed 120 people.”
So many inconvenient facts that contradict the myth of Global Warming. In the United States, the 10 hottest years on record were all in the 1920s and 1930s. (Those Model A Fords have wide carbon tire-tracks.) Temperatures rose between 1910 and 1945, fell from 1945 to 1975, and rose again for the next 20 years – which bears no relationship to the production of greenhouse gasses.
In an open letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (December 13, 2007), 100 eminent scientists from all over the world observed: “It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity throughout the ages. … The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climate influences of human produced carbon-dioxide (CO2), a non- polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis.”
Not only is there no reliable evidence that reducing CO2 emissions will affect climate change, the signers note, but “because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.”
Not that human suffering ever stopped the left. It wants and needs man-made Global Warming as a way to counter what it considers the most potent threats to its agenda -- faith and family.
The left must have its scapegoat. This is absolutely essential. For Marx it was the bourgeoisie. For the ‘60s New Left, it was America – spelled with a “k.” White males are the villains of multiculturalism. Now, it’s babies and retrograde churches that are destroying the planet. The environment has assumed the role of the proletariat, the Third World and racial minorities in earlier models of damnation and salvation.
In particular, the left cringes at the thought of Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodox Jews and Mormons having lots of children -- passing their misogynistic, homophobic, species-centric, suicidally archaic worldview to the next generation.
The left has always worried about the reproductive patterns of certain people. As Jonah Goldberg explains in his book “Liberal Fascism,” from the beginning, racial eugenics was a project of the left -- or progressives, as they called themselves then and now.
H.G. Wells, a hero of pre-World War II progressivism (a socialist who wrote science fiction, much like Al Gore), said that in order for humankind to move to the sunny uplands of utopia, “swarms of black and brown, and dirty (lower class) white and yellow people” would have to be discouraged from breeding – or physically eliminated. Moreover, Goldberg explains, “The foremost institution combating eugenics around the world was the Catholic Church.”
For those like Oliver “Buzz” Thomas (perpetrator of the aforesaid USATODAY commentary), hordes of rapidly multiplying Catholics, Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews have taken the place of “swarms of black and brown, and dirty white and yellow peoples.”
The irony here is that, unlike Global Warming, rapidly declining birthrates is a reality, not a theory. Worldwide, in 1970, the average woman had 6 children. Today, that average is only 2.8, with further declines forecast.
If current trends continue, by 2050, the world will hold 248 million fewer children under 5 years of age than it does today. The crisis we will confront in this century isn’t overpopulation, but a birth-dearth leading to population decline. When it comes to maintaining civilization, people are the one indispensable element.
By heeding His words and having large families, those reactionary believers indicted by Green Jacobins are doing God’s work, as well as humanity’s.
In his USATODAY diatribe, Thomas writes: “Population growth hits hardest in poor nations, and, as poverty increases, public health declines. I am quite certain that God is not the author of human misery, but by preaching against birth control at the same time we are preaching against abortion, it seems that we are making God out as cruel, a buffoon or both.” Thomas believes the word of God is negotiable – and must be constantly reinterpreted so as not make him “cruel, a buffoon or both.”
Buzz has it backward. Poor countries are often rich in natural resources but lacking in human capital. By encouraging or forcing emerging nations to limit their population, Global Warming hysterics are dooming them to perpetual poverty.
God, on the other hand, tells us that children are the true source of prosperity as well as happiness.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: do we listen to God or a guy called Buzz? Hmmm, tough decision. An earlier version of this commentary appeared on GrassTopsUSA.com
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LEFT ELITISM DIDN’T START WITH OBAMA By Don Feder Posted: April 22. 2008 PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION(.pdf)
I grew up in a small town in upstate New York, much like those in Pennsylvania that Barack Obama dumped on at a Democratic fund-raiser in San Francisco. How well I recall the happy days of my youth – the evenings spent singing hymns and cleaning our guns at Klan rallies. At the closed-door fundraiser (San Francisco Democrats off on a spree. Damned from here to eternity. God have mercy on such as thee… .), the Senator let the mask of amiability slip to reveal the face of a sneering elitist. When asked why he wasn’t doing better among Pennsylvania voters in the sticks, Obama explained to the brie-and-Chablis crowd that the rubes are agitated over lost jobs, and “So, it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration.” Obama doesn’t much care for the churches Christians in the hinterlands flock to. Give him that old-time religion of his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah (“God d--- America!) Wright – anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and Afro-centrist theology. Leftist snob that he is, Barack sees small-town America as an ugly, benighted place -- a snake-pit of racism (“antipathy to people who aren’t like them”) and xenophobia, populated by God-intoxicated gun-nuts – AKA: “typical white persons.” Hillary castigated her rival and improbably offered herself as a tribune of the people. “I don’t think it helps to divide our country into one America that is enlightened and one that is not,” the New York Yankees fan solemnly intoned. “If you want to be president of all Americans, you need to respect all Americans.” (This from a candidate who, as First Lady, ordered White House aides not to make eye-contact with her as they passed her august presence, lest she be sullied by their plebian gaze.) To Hillary’s elitism charge, Obama hotly replied that he was only speaking the truth: Americans who don’t attend San Fran soirees really are bitter, and he sympathizes with them– damn it all! They’re bitter because they’re losing jobs, Obama insists. They’re bitter because mortgages are being foreclosed (as if this has never happened before). They’re bitter because we’re not talking to the whack-jobs who run Iran and Syria. They’re bitter because undocumented Mexicans are coming here to partake of the American dream. And they’re bitter because we have yet to achieve socialized medicine – and Republicans are blocking the way to the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Obama is a dazzling reflection of his party’s disdain for the hoi-polloi. Since the Sixties, elitism has been the Democrats’ cultural mark of Cain. In a generation, the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Truman morphed into the party of McGovern, Dukakis and Gore. In 2004, Howard Dean, then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Southerners should stop basing their votes on “race, guns, God and gays” – and should instead support his party for its knee-jerk isolationism, its intransigent opposition to armed self-defense, its eagerness to sacrifice the economic opportunities of the white working class to expiate racial guilt (otherwise known as affirmative action) and its tender regard for the rights of the trans-gendered. In 1992, when some voters wondered why Ms. Rodham kept her maiden name until her husband ran for governor the second time, Hillary rebuked them thusly: “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.” In other words, full-time moms and homemakers (those who don’t consign their only child to a nanny paid for by Arkansas taxpayers) are Stepford Wives – automatons in aprons who spend their days waltzing around spotless homes, feather-dusters in hand, doling out cookies and caffeinated beverages to other brainless breeders. When Bill and Hill first infested the White House, a Secret Service agent overheard Chelsea Clinton refer to those pledged to take a bullet to defend the First Family as “our personal, trained pigs.” When the agent sought to rebuke her, Chelsea told him “That’s what my parents call you” (as related by Gary Aldrich in “Unlimited Access”). Ah, that Clinton common touch. Two years after losing the presidency, the Democrats’ last great pretender – John Forbes-500 Kerry – told an audience: “Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And, if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” So, work hard kids – or you could be a loser who ends up fighting for his country in Iraq. Who says the Democrats don’t love our military? All elitists aren’t confined to the party of Barack Obama and Chelsea’s mama. Addressing the National Council of La Raza (an Hispanic group based on racial-identity politics), RINO Senator Lindsay Graham promised to keep pushing amnesty for illegal aliens, and if Middle Americans didn’t like it “We’re going to tell the bigots to shut up.” FYI, those bigots include 89% of the American people who, according to a 2006 Time magazine poll, think illegal immigration is a serious problem. Speaking at a fundraiser for Senator Clinton, Elton John told the audience, “I never cease to be amazed at the misogynistic attitude of some people in the country. And I say to hell with them.” But, of course, anyone who doesn’t worship at the feet of America’s Evita must be a woman-hating Neanderthal. When it comes to stereotyping average Americans, you just can’t beat a Democratic fundraiser. Earlier this year, Michelle Obama told a campaign rally, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country, because hope is making a comeback,” i.e. my husband appears to be headed to the White House. She wasn’t proud of her country when we won the Cold War. She wasn’t proud of America when we deposed the terrorist Taliban and the Butcher of Baghdad. She wasn’t proud of her country when it led the world in charitable giving or pioneered the Internet revolution. Nope, it wasn’t until her hubby’s campaign gained traction – proving that some typical white persons were capable of overcoming their innate prejudice -- that Michelle Obama found something to like about America. Main Street Americans are patriots – without reservation or equivocation. Leftists think the American saga consists of slavery, sweatshops, Wounded Knee and water-boarding. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, while 66% of conservatives think America is basically fair and decent, only 49% of liberals view their country positively, compared to the 36% who see America as unfair and discriminatory. Since a nation is a reflection of its people, 36% of liberals agree with Obama that the boonies are inhabited by those who have “antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Like his tirade in San Francisco, Obama’s voting record demonstrates his utter contempt for Middle America. In 2007, the National Journal rated him the most liberal member of the United States Senate, beating out Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Patrick Leahy for the honor. Obama consistently voted for massive tax hikes and more regulation – FYI, policies that destroy jobs in small-town America. He’s supported banning the manufacture and sale of handguns, to keep trigger-happy clodhoppers from exercising their Second Amendment rights. He favors repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, criticized the Supreme Court’s decision upholding a ban on partial birth abortions and thinks drivers licenses for illegal aliens is cool. Because he’s enlightened and compassionate, he’s convinced the rubes are a gun-toting, fundamentalist lynch mob waiting to happen. The left’s disdain for ordinary Americans colors its entire agenda. Because we’re too stupid to know how to spend our income, taxes should be confiscatory. Since we’re too improvident to plan for our retirement, Social Security must remain sacrosanct. Because we’ll pass our bigotry on to the next generation, government needs to indoctrinate our children – with multiculturalism, skepticism and an appreciation for alternative lifestyles. Due to our violent nature, we can’t be trusted with guns. So government should make it progressively harder for citizens to own them. Because we won’t vote responsibly (for “progressive” politicians), increasingly, political power should be vested in the courts, which are insulated from the will of the people. We are two nations divided by a cultural/ideological chasm the width of the Grand Canyon. One resides in San Francisco, Grosse Pointe, Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Chevy Chase. The other lives in towns two hours off the Interstate. One thinks guns are more dangerous than criminals. The other thinks gun-control means a good grip and a steady aim. One believes in capital punishment. The other looks at a serial killer and asks where we, as a society, went wrong. One feels for illegal aliens denied amnesty. The other feels for the black teens in Newark murdered by illegals last year. One thinks abortion is a constitutional right. The other thinks it’s an abomination. One thinks Islamism is a menace. The other thinks it might just have a point. One thinks parents should raise their children. The other thinks the proverbial Village -- au pairs, Guatemalan housemaids and daycare workers– should shoulder the burden. One believes society should support marriage. The other thinks it’s passé – except for gays. One believes in moral absolutes. The other believes in relativism. One believes in free will and personal responsibility. The other believes in Sigmund Freud, Dr Spock and Oprah. One believes in God. The other believes in government. It’s hard to warm to a candidate who thinks you’re a malicious moron who takes solace in a .45 and a type of Shiite Christianity. That’s why the left lost 7 of the last 10 presidential elections, even with the establishment media cheering it on and savaging the other side. Bush wasn’t much of a campaigner. He lacked the eloquence of Reagan and the charm of Bill Clinton. But when voters compared him to Al (I’m-smarter-than-you-and-I-know-it) Gore and John (he’s-just-a-gigolo) Kerry, W didn’t look half bad. Whatever his faults, they knew he didn’t consider the common man beneath him. Most U.S. presidents came from small towns or rural communities – including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan – as did many inventors and entrepreneurs. Thomas Edison hailed from Port Huron, Michigan. Henry Ford was raised on a farm in a rural town west of Detroit. John D. Rockefeller grew up in Owego, New York. The Americans who are doing the fighting and dying in Iraq are disproportionately from Main Street America, a reservoir of patriotism. And they don’t trust you? – fancy that, Senator. An earlier version of this commentary appeared on GrassTopsUSA.com
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