Here, Wendy Milling provides a refreshingly bright and forceful defense of Capitalism.

Assaults on capitalism are rooted in a crybaby metaphysics [:)], and they rely on obfuscations, equivocations, and an attitude of militant evasion. One trick is to make inappropriate demands of capitalism, then stomp and pout and denounce capitalism when those demands are not met. [amusement mine]

In the wake of the current gulf disaster, so many are quick to join the BP lynch mob without considering the influence of statist environmentalist policies.

Observe that the government, beholden to an insane environmentalist ideology that views nature as an intrinsic value and superior to human beings, forbade oil companies to drill nearer to the coast line where there were shallow waters. In the shallow areas, an oil leak could be directly accessed. Instead, companies were only allowed to drill in areas too deep for current technology to address.

Wonderful to see her rub the nose of Mr. Frank in his own cognitive slobber.

With the masses screaming for every sort of lynching imaginable, The gulf disaster is an immense gift for Obama and the czars. While nationalizing (to any extent) BP would doubtless bring pleasure to Che’ Hollywood, I suspect he’ll opt for the more lucrative option, i.e., using the incident as political capital.

First, exactly what would qualify a team of bureaucratic goons to better handle the situation than those who’ve spent their engineering and scientific careers in the industry? Just like handing an iPad to a caveman, government would have neither the intellectual ability nor the proper motivation necessary for efficacy. Moreover, “receivership” would have the political baggage of constituent outrage from at least some segment (albeit minor) of our population. Even though most Americans don’t understand the proper role of government, there are now more of those with the awareness that they *should* know, and who are on the lookout for the statist machine which steamrolled the auto and healthcare industries. I don’t think this administration would dare risk the potential backlash (from even a small segment of voters) that would result if they assumed any type official dominance over BP.

Instead, consider the widespread anti-business and environmental rage that this ordeal has invoked, and how that rage could be funneled into a moral crusade with enough leverage to push through cap-n-trade and/or virtually any other suite of environmentally oriented regulations and economic controls.

Can a pragmatist think long(er)-term?

Why risk it when they can play it safe and hit the power jackpot? Why offend 30% of the population for a quickie when you can coddle 90% of them and get a lusty lifetime affair? What tyrant would trade short-term power with a political cost for long-term, farther reaching power which also bolsters their political image? Who was it that said “never let a crisis go to waste“?

This event could be the most generous gift of political capital the thug administration could wish for. Who knows, maybe they did?

…was apparently let out of the bag.

Obama’s racist/marxist Green Jobs thug seemed to fit the administration’s statist mold in all but one aspect - he’s too honest. Recognizing the potential for Jones to undermine their dictatorial yearnings by being a a bit too open about his ideals, the Obama administration decided he should go.

Too bad - the last thing we need is more statist politicians in office who effectively conceal their destructive wishes for America. I wish more bureaucrats would explicitly verbalize their ideals - perhaps that would arouse more serious dialogue amongst our intellectually lethargic culture.

If nothing else, at least Van Jones is honest and doesn’t betray his ideals on stage - for that I applaud him.

In yet another inevitable attempt to regulate existence, thermal imaging cameras can now be used to detect any citizens who insist on using more energy than nanny-state environmentalist deem appropriate.

Thermal imaging cameras are being used to create colour-coded maps which will enable council officers to identify offenders and pay them a visit to educate them about the harm to the environment and measures they can take.

Perhaps council officers could benefit from certain education as well - namely the concepts of man’s rights to life, liberty and property, private property.

‘We do a lot on domestic energy conservation already and realised it would be useful to see if any of the homes which were particularly hot were properties where people had not insulated their lofts.

‘We were also able to look at very cold properties and think we might have picked up people on low incomes who are not heating their homes because they cannot afford to.’

This new statist weapon is not only useful in cracking down on subjective-law criminals, but also for identifying wealth redistribution targets - an egalitarian swiss-army knife, if you will.

Lib Dem group leader Stuart Beadle added: ‘Cameras are in place all over today and we have to accept them. So long as the right guidelines are in place and it will bring benefits, I think the scheme is a good thing.’

Of course, we must remind ourselves that these planes, cameras and all the logistics involved are metaphysical facts and must be conformed to as such. And, according to Beadle this is a good scheme, although he neglects to mention whose standard of value his assessment is based on. I doubt the individual who rightfully produced the wealth to pay for such technical luxuries as heat and electricity will appreciate the pestilence of government enviro-thugs offering their “friendly advice”.

Altruist-collectivist-environmentalist-nanny-statism - such is the manner by which a society implodes into stagnant misery. Hatred of life, hatred of man, hatred of wealth, and hatred of reality is the moral of this story.

I’ve become firearm enthusiast. I like the engineering, I like the power, I like the security. Firearms are a tribute to the focus of mans mind on the endeavor to protect his life.

A particularly uncomfortable confrontation in the street out front of our rental house in 2006 prompted my official foray into the world of firearms. We were building our current home and had the opportunity for very cheap and flexible rent through a colleague of my wife. Every deal is a tradeoff and in this case the trade was cheap rent for a somewhat shady locale. There are areas in most towns referred to as the wrong side of the tracks - this home would have been built on the tracks. One side of the street was warm and pleasant, the other dark and risky.

I grew up like many guys with BB and Pellet rifles. We lived on several wooded acres so plinking targets, cans or birds out in the back yards was no big deal. Growing up in a small rural suburb meant I had family and friends that were avid outdoorsman, and through them I gained experience with shotguns and rifles. My father had both and a revolver, but I never really paid much attention to them. He instilled a healthy sense of fear, both in the inherent dangers of guns and especially the dangers of me tampering with his guns. I remained very distant, if not isolated from deadly weapons from my early teens until a few years ago.

A few hair-raising stares in downtown Charlotte on dark early mornings as I walked in from the parking lot initiated my curiosity. The booming, lowered and tinted thug-mobile pugnaciously blocking my driveway at the rental house one late winter night was the deciding factor that led me to a serious approach to self-defense.

I have a tendency to take on new endeavors in a very dedicated manner and this one would be no exception. I very quickly recognized that a firearm in incompetent hands is a liability that can ruin lives. I joined a few ranges, one near work, and one near home and began training a few days per week. I soaked up as much info as I could find. I tapped into a new realm of industry, culture and controversy. I also started to really enjoy shooting and the mechanical aspects of maintenance and part upgrades. I learned that like any market, there were niche offerings for specialize purposes. There are pistols small enough for effective concealment, there are those with upgraded components and tailored for accuracy, there are those optimized virtually every situation one could be in requiring such power at their disposal. As a natural progression I started to look into the rifle market. There are traditional bolt-action rifles and there are the modular, military inspired tactical rifles. The latter are far more interesting to me. The AR-15 platform is a very innovative and flexible weapon. In addition, it’s also the weapon of choice for those who’d prefer me not have the ability to defend myself with deadly force. It’s a powerful, customizable, all-purpose and pleasantly engineered source of anxiety for the irrational - I’ll take two of those.

I must get to the point.

I’m going hunting this year for the first time in 20 years. I’m excited - not necessarily about killing an animal, but about the exercise as a whole. The excitement of being outdoors, gearing up to face the weather, acting covert, relying on the technological masterpiece in your hands, the rush of the kill, and the reward of food to show for it in some cases. Depending on the game, there are some I’d actually prefer not to kill. Deer, I appreciate, but if we’re talking about an undeniably ugly and unappealing beast such as a bore, fox or coyote - I’ll have absolutely no reservations about their elimination.

I carried a vague awareness of restrictions around hunting. I knew there were certain times of the year that hunting with particular types of weapons was common. What I had been naively insulated from was the tyrannical invasiveness of our game laws. Given the overreaching club of Government in all other areas of our lives, why would it surprise me that essentially I have to ask the state permission to act within my proper role on the food chain?

I’m required a license to hunt or fish. I can’t go kill a varmint without paying a fee to the State. Even after which I’m only privileged to kill so many, and only during very brief time periods. What weapon I use to kill is restricted. What caliber I use is restricted. What time of day I do so is restricted. The sex of the animal I claim is restricted.

Does the state own all the animals? Or, do animals have rights? What a brilliant concoction of Environmentalism and Gun Control! And consider the potential revenue stream - subjective law always proves to be an adequate means to control men and loot their pockets.

The animals are either property, or they have a right to life. Which is the State implying? All arguments supporting these laws are founded in one of these foundations, neither of which can hold their weight on either moral nor practical grounds (the moral always is the practical).

Laws should be based on rights.

• There is no specific right to have an ample supply of game for hunting.
• Animals have no rights.
• Man has a right to his life, liberty and property.

Who’s right to what am I forcefully violating by hunting according to my own terms? Men have the right to their lives, their liberty and their property - all three of which are violated by this perversion of justice. Hunting to eat, freedom to do so at my discretion and the right to do so unchallenged on my on land are all three dependent on the consent of the State. Once again, another sick inversion of the proper role of government. The supposed protector of rights is the violator.

Anyone surprised?

Can you imagine our founder’s response to the notion that what was a staple of survival in their time has now been criminalized? America, as they envisioned and died for, no longer exists.

Despite all evidence to the contrary I cling to a sliver of hope that the clowns in Washington will come to their senses. With the US economy on the brink of collapse, how could they possibly not realize that more economically destructive regulations aren’t such a good idea? Unfortunately I think this will prove to be mild compared to what’s in store.

Environmentalism will likely be the death knell of America. Our Government, which has long since abandoned its proper scope, is a lethally convenient tool for earth worshipers to force their will, and the resulting economic turmoil on others. The near future should be a solid indicator of our priorities - recovery and survival, or further tampering and destruction. Life or death? Is America indifferent to the question? Are we so blinded with irrational lust for subjective fantasies that we’ve numbed our abilities to sense it coming? Wake up damnit!

We’re staring at a lighted fuse that will end this country as we know it, and does congress take a mandate break? Hell no! There are laws to be written, rights to be trampled, force to be yielded! Why would they take a break? There’s still just a glimmer of freedom left in our stagnant air and free people do things against the will of the collective. As long as there is dissension, there are laws to be written. Not until every individual is either cowering in submission or shackled by the state will they rest from meddling with the affairs of others.

Such is the nature of power lusting collectivists.

Unfortunately, my footprint seems to have gone down from 12.8 to 10.8.  I’m not certain, but It must be due to the fact that I work from home more lately.

Your Footprint 32.097	Country Average 20.4	World Target 2

An interesting note from the quiz - I was only one question into the quiz (the sq. footage of my home) before my footprint was too big for a single earth. The threshold that broke the one earth barrier was a home >2500 sq.ft. - very close to the US average home sq. footage according to 2007 standards.  That’s right, the average American home is too big for (purported) environmental sustenance.

According the the greens, the moral approach to life is to renounce the material benefits of centuries of thought and productivity.  They vary in their means to such end according to the negligible degree to which they enjoy life.  Those who hate life essentially want the utter destruction of technology and industry at best, the extinction of man at worse.  Those who cling to a remnant of joy in living want you to go through the motions of living without necessarily feeling alive.  These are the ones who promote “green living” as a necessary sacrifice that can be ‘fun for the whole family’.  Sacrifice, according to both camps is the underlying tenet.  To them, individuals are merely spokes in the wheel - regardless of whether the wheel is a town, a country, or a globe.

However, a rational man’s purpose is his own happiness in accordance with his rational values.

Value is an inherently human concept both by the fact that it presupposes choice (volition), which only man has, and courtesy of the notion that it is only human life that can be the basis of such judgment.  The earth has no value outside of its facilitation of mans needs.  Man must use natural resources to survive.  To insist that man live void of natural resources, or even to guilt man into sacrificing elements of his life where he finds value for the sake of non-living material objects, is to sacrifice the living to the non-living.  To hire a governing body to force man to do such is pure evil.

Contrary to the guilt that these nihilistic man-haters intend to conjure, I’m proud of my “footprint”.   A token of my productivity and a tribute to man’s mind - I intend to increase it to the extent of my existence.

I have no desire to live under their diet-life terms.

Facts:

• Objective law is such that punishes or objectively precludes violation of an individual’s right to life, liberty or property.
• The Earth has no value outside of facilitating man’s survival.
• Government’s sole and only legitimate purpose is to protect individual rights.

This sickening story (via Gus Van Horn) details a perverse mockery of all of the above.  This is evil in as pure and vile a form as you’ll ever see.  In some jail a man sits harnessed by this culmination of putrid statism.

Anyone who’s not repulsed is partially responsible.

By Craig Biddle of The Objective Standard

Because Earth Day is intended to further the cause of environmentalism—and because environmentalism is an anti-human ideology—on April 22, those who care about human life should not celebrate Earth Day; they should celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day.

Either man takes the Earth’s raw materials—such as trees, petroleum, aluminum, and atoms—and transforms them into the requirements of his life, or he dies. To live, man must produce the goods on which his life depends; he must produce homes, automobiles, computers, electricity, and the like; he must seize nature and use it to his advantage. There is no escaping this fact. Even the allegedly “noble” savage must pick or perish. Indeed, even if a person produces nothing, insofar as he remains alive he indirectly exploits the Earth by parasitically surviving off the exploitative efforts of others.

Exploiting the Earth—using the raw materials of nature for one’s life-serving purposes—is a basic requirement of human life. According to environmentalism, however, man should not use nature for his needs; he should keep his hands off “the goods”; he should leave nature alone, come what may.

Environmentalism is not concerned with human health and wellbeing—neither ours nor that of generations to come. If it were, it would advocate the one social system that ensures that the Earth and its elements are used in the most productive, life-serving manner possible: capitalism.

Capitalism is the only social system that recognizes and protects each individual’s right to act in accordance with his basic means of living: the judgment of his mind. Environmentalism, of course, does not and cannot advocate capitalism, because if people are free to act on their judgment, they will strive to produce and prosper; they will transform the raw materials of nature onto the requirements of human life; they will exploit the Earth and live.

Environmentalism rejects the basic moral premise of capitalism—the idea that people should be free to act on their judgment—because it rejects a more fundamental idea on which capitalism rests: the idea that the requirements of human life constitute the standard of moral value. While the standard of value underlying capitalism is human life (meaning, that which is necessary for human beings to live and prosper), the standard of value underlying environmentalism is nature untouched by man.

The basic principle of environmentalism is that nature (i.e., “the environment”) has intrinsic value—value in and of itself, value apart from and irrespective of the requirements of human life—and that this value must be protected from its only adversary: man. Rivers must be left free to flow unimpeded by human dams, which divert natural flows, alter natural landscapes, and disrupt wildlife habitats. Glaciers must be left free to grow or shrink according to natural causes, but any human activity that might affect their size must be prohibited. Naturally generated carbon dioxide (such as that emitted by oceans and volcanoes) and naturally generated methane (such as that emitted by swamps and termites) may contribute to the greenhouse effect, but such gasses must not be produced by man. The globe may warm or cool naturally (e.g., via increases or decreases in sunspot activity), but man must not do anything to affect its temperature. And so on.

In short, according to environmentalism, if nature affects nature, the effect is good; if man affects nature, the effect is evil.

Stating the essence of environmentalism in such stark terms raises some illuminating questions: If the good is nature untouched by man, how is man to live? What is he to eat? What is he to wear? Where is he to reside? How can man do anything his life requires without altering, harming, or destroying some aspect of nature? In order to nourish himself, man must consume meats, vegetables, fruits, and the like. In order to make clothing, he must skin animals, pick cotton, manufacture polyester, and the like. In order to build a house—or even a hut—he must cut down trees, dig up clay, make fires, bake bricks, and so forth. Each and every action man takes to support or sustain his life entails the exploitation of nature. Thus, on the premise of environmentalism, man has no right to exist.

It comes down to this: Each of us has a choice to make. Will I recognize that man’s life is the standard of moral value—that the good is that which sustains and furthers human life—and thus that people have a moral right to use the Earth and its elements for their life-serving needs? Or will I accept the notion that nature has “intrinsic” value—value in and of itself, value apart from and irrespective of human needs—and thus that people have no right to exist?

There is no middle ground here. Either human life is the standard of moral value, or it is not. Either nature has intrinsic value, or it does not.