November 26, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

I love this quote I saw at The Club for Growth:

I don’t know what the best tax rates are, for rich or poor.

But I’m pretty sure that it’s unhealthy for a democracy when the majority of citizens don’t see government as a service they’re reluctantly paying for but as an extortionist that cuts them in for a share of the loot.

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November 26, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Warning: the below thoughts were quickly written, and assumptions were made without explanation. In fact, they may not even qualify as thoughts. Also, I am prone to hyperbole, which I will apologize for in advance. Proceed at your own risk.

Contemporary environmentalists, from the mainstream to the fervent, would hold me and “my kind,”—the new underclass in American society considered reprehensible by the moralizing environmentalists–in contempt if they were privy to our lifestyles: we find the costs of recycling to exceed the benefits, on average (ignoring externality costs, I concede); we don’t intend to start recycling any time soon; we also, perhaps most distasteful of all, don’t purchase carbon offsets to negate our destructive lifestyles.

Being included in this new underclass of society, which is unjustly villified, as I perceive it, is not surprising to me. In the course of human history, our species is very much prone to moralizing the issues; that is, painting an issue in terms of black and white, right and wrong, instead of managing the particular issue in terms of marginal costs and benefits.

Particularly disturbing to me about environmental moralizing is that many environmentalists openly preach conservation of our natural resources, but in private they fail to heed their own advice. Human beings, they lecture, are the cause of almost all of our environmental problems.

If our goal is to protect the environment without regard to human happiness, our best path to salvation, according to the fanatical environmentalists, is to kill ourselves. A little extreme, you say. Okay, but at the very least, if human beings are indeed nothing but trouble for our environment, and the environment’s well being is paramount, the environmentalist’s objective must logically be to reduce the number of human beings, if not now, at least the future. So, for the sake of our environment, shouldn’t the ardent environmentalists advocate a policy of no procreation? Another person is, after all, just more pollution.

I cannot see why they wouldn’t seek and abide by such a policy, unless they put their petty personal desires in front of the environment, and I know they’d no more do this than a Catholic priest would have an inappropriate relationship with a minor. After all, fewer humans produce less garbage, fewer used disposable diapers, drive fewer cars, require fewer lots to build homes on; in short, a policy of no procreation would eventually reduce the carbon footprint of the human race, which, if our goal is concerned only with benefiting the environment, is the shortest path to this magical paradise envisioned by impassioned environmentalists. But we don’t even see the High Priest—Al Gore—of the Church of  Environmentalism adhering to this policy. Could it be that he is considering both the personal costs and benefits of this particular policy, ultimately choosing his welfare over the welfare of the environment? Assuredly he is. 

With a policy of no procreation, nobody would live to enjoy this Eden envisioned by environmentalists. With a more reasonable goal that finds a balance between protecting the environment and the modern living standards of people, we might recognize that humans are benefits as well as costs. After all, environmentalists, even the most passionate, recognize that people are also a benefit (solution); otherwise they would not bother to advocate we do our part in protecting Mother Earth.

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November 26, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

The DC Vs. Heller case has me worked up, as it does so many others. Here’s a good piece on why the Second Amendment is an individual right, not collective.

Now let me offer you this far-left perspective. Notice that the author tries to characterize proponents of the 2nd Amendment as those on the fringe of politics. In this author’s view, those claiming an individual right to gun ownership are trying to create a right that has never existed in the U.S., despite over two hundred years of history to the contrary. It is his position–gun ownership as a collective right only–that is a relatively new take on the 2nd Amendment. For instance, look at this statement:

And so the Supreme Court is now being asked to decide whether the Second Amendment creates an individual right to own guns. There is a decent chance that the Court will say that it does. Whatever the Court says, we have seen an amazingly rapid change in constitutional understandings–even a revolution–as an apparently fraudulent interpretation pushed by “special interest groups” (read: the National Rifle Association) has become mainstream.

Notice how this author and others who admire intrusive, overbearing governments are attempting to re-write history. Hey, if the truth it detrimental to your case, fabricate your own “truth,” just like the Nazi’s and communists. Just read it and see yourself.

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