Sunday, December 20, 2009

The Regressive Progressive

Call me strange but I happen to be a person that sees progress as having more than what you started with. Before the wheel we got every where by shank's mare (on your own feet) The wheel meant we could now ride every where or at least not have to carry everything on our backs. Domestication of animals meant we had beast power instead of man power.

As you can see with every bit of progress we gained something we did not have before. In fact we have a great deal more than we ever did. While we did loose on the physical activity end of it. We gained in the fact we didn't work ourselves to early permanent retirement(death).

We at one time were a civilization organized into what is known as feudalism. Simply put we lived on land that a powerful lord owned. We paid rent to him which was a portion of our labour and or military service. Lest we be kicked off his land. The Lordship had last word on everything, while he didn't sully himself with our day to day lives if he caught wind of something that could directly affect his income or ability to field a regiment of men at arms he would have his men put a stop to it.

For the most part that is ancient history we discovered Constitutional democracy. We decided that their ought to be limits on what the powers that be could do. There were these fellows in the early days before the idea of Constitutional democracy, they were a radical bunch, they had the nerve to think people ought to get paid for a days work and individuals had rights. They were the progressives of their time they were radical in their beliefs.

Imagine rights for common people! That was enough to get a person hung back then, no member of the aristocracy wanted one of these radicals in their town. They would make people discontented with the order of things...Rights for common people how absurd.

The idea of rights and freedom caught on like a house on fire, there was no putting that genie back in the bottle. The tighter the tyrants squeezed the more people slipped through their fingers. Freedom came at a very high cost in some lands. People died for it.

Today in our century progressive liberals are common place, sadly they are not what they used to be. Today their idea of progress is to take away freedom and democracy, the common people are just too common to enjoy it. They over indulge in food and drink, they waste their money on frivolities. They indulge in unhealthy things and become burdensome to others. So our once libertine philosophers that fought for the common man, have turned over a new leaf. They now lobby for restrictive laws to limit our freedom and try to stack democratic governments to favour them.

It would appear that our erstwhile liberators have decided that they know what is best for us, and have become the feudal lords. While they won't evict you from your home directly they will tax you out of it. They have even bandied about the idea of taking away your health care if you do things they disapprove of, like smoke tobacco or eat too many burgers.

It is a sad day indeed, for it seems that progress today is to regress to yesterday.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Copenhagen And The Green Shirts

Carbon, public enemy number one today? I find it had to believe that the element every living thing is dependent upon is going to set the world on fire. At least metaphorically speaking. Indeed it has been said that this element when used as fuel becomes the evil carbon dioxide gas, a greenhouse gas...But wait a minute 97% of the CO2 is from natural sources including every living creature when it exhales. The remaining 3% comes from human activities.

The measure of CO2 is done in parts per million currently we are at aprox. 395 ppm presently, among the falling sky set(the disciples of Chicken of Little) we are already over the tipping point and disaster is immanent. There will be floods, crop failures, disease, famine, sea levels will rise and the polar bears are dieing. The environmental protection agency in the United States has officially declared CO2 a pollutant. OH MY GOG. Anyone who denies this will be rubbished,and vilified by the the Green Shirts, the band of enviro-fascists stormtroopers leading the charge in a new world order.

There is just one problem with that, there has been no warming over the last decade. In fact there has been a cooling trend. That notwithstanding, I would first like to know how CO2 became the villain? I would also point out that Methane is another greenhouse gas CH4, in fact it is 22 times the greenhouse gas CO2 is. It's belched into the atmosphere from natural sources as well, bogs, volcanic activity, every living creature that produces flatulence, and good ol mother earth when she shifts and causes a pocket of hydro-carbonates to belch. But lets get back to CO2 every plant and tree on this planet is dependant upon CO2. CO2 to them is what oxygen is us. Where we breath oxygen and produce CO2 they breath CO2 and exhale oxygen. Remember the cause celeb of the eighties "Save the Rain forests" the lungs of the planet.

Indeed if trees could march they would march on the EPA office in Washington D.C.. I would like to point out a few things that seems to get missed in all the hoopla and rhetoric. We need green house gases lest we become a ball of ice and life perishes on this rock in space. We as a species evolved at the equator where it is always hot, we evolved in a period in time when the CO2 levels were much higher than they are today (some 3000 ppm). Life for us began in an incubator not a refrigerator. When we expanded outwards from the warmth of our equatorial home we found we had to adapt, make or find shelter, fashion clothing to protect our frail bodies from the cold. We were not meant to live on an ice sheet. It is a matter fact that we have had several ice ages. The last one was called the mini ice age it ended in the mid eighteen hundreds, it began at the end of the middle ages and witches were blamed for the cold weather. We know how that turned out, funny though, the witch hunts were started by the intellectuals of the day,,hmmm anyone see a trend there?

Today there is now evidence that some scientist have lied about it, fudged figures and bad data. I am of the firm belief that if something is supposed to be of such great concern and import, that all of humanity's existence is in the balance why is there a need to lie about it? Saving face has never served anyone well, ever! For me their is no debate, our climate changes all the time. There is only one factor that can drive an entire planets climate that force is the sun. We happen to be in a solar minimum, lack of sun spots and solar flares. Oddly enough in the nineties we were in a solar maximum, abundant sun spots and solar flares. We have no control of that.

We need to stop behaving like sheep and taking the word of agenda driven organizations and take a hard look at the long history of this planet. It has been warming and cooling for millenniums with out us. It will continue to do so long after us. It is our egocentric nature that leads us to believe we actually make a difference in this.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Dec 6 L'Ecole Polytechnique, emotional rhetoric to a political end

Today Dec 6th marks the anniversary of the shooting at L'Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. My thoughts are with the survivors and families of the victims.

I would like to take some time to speak of "EMOTION" This event generates emotions, however it was emotion that created the tragedy to begin with. Indeed Gamil Gharbi(aka Marc Lepine) was a seriously emotionally disturbed young man, with a hatred of feminists. He took this hatred to its ultimate conclusion and committed the heinous act he did. In the end he took his own life leaving no one to be culpable for the crime, no one to stand trial and be held responsible.

I believe this created a vacuum in the psyche of the nation, and nature abhors a vacuum. To replace Gharbi we turned to the only tangible thing left behind, his gun. Guns became the focus of our outrage, emotion created a storm. The rational was if there were no guns in private hands this would not happen again. If only there had been laws in place controlling firearms this would not have happened.

There is a large problem with this, emotions are irrational, emotions get people into trouble more often than not. Spur of the moment emotional responses always have dire consequence. It causes people to do things that in sober rational second thought to say things like "I wish I hadn't done that" or "I should of thought before I acted.".

In this instance in light of the events of L'Ecole Polytechnique cause the then Government of Kim Campbell to amend existing law. Only one act of these amendments made any rational sense, the requirement for safety training. The rest were mere feel good accomplish nothing regulations. Enter Wendy Cukier and the Coalitions for Gun Control. They were behind the scenes lobbying, their ideas were given fertile ground with the emerging reorganized Liberal Party under Jean Chretien.

The opportunity not being lost on him campaigned on a strong gun control platform. Using L'Ecole Polytechnique to their advantage and the public disgust in the Mulroney Governance of the Country. This was enough to cause women and feminist not to vote for and elect Canada's first woman Prime Minister.

Moving on to ethics and morality. In a nutshell is the difference between right and wrong and knowing it. In a rational objective way using reason and logic. Is it right to punish someone who has committed no crime or done no wrong? .. Is it right to push your beliefs on others? ... Is it right to continually support something that you know has not solved the problem but if you admit you are wrong you will look bad? tougher question eh? Is is right to lie in order to support this, is it right to lie to others? If you have answered "Yes" to any of those questions, it is a safe bet you slither rather than walk upright.

It is immoral to punish people that have done no wrong, it is equally immoral to blame them for something they did not do or had anything to do with. It is immoral to cast a wide disparaging opinion on a community because you disagree with their lawful past times and pursuits. It is most immoral to lie to people who have put their trust in you in order to save face.

That is pretty much what the Liberal Government of Jean Chretien and CFGC did when they enacted the Firearms Act(c-68). In fact the Liberals knew it was their 1977 law that made sure no one could stop Gharbi. They(the Liberal Party) and the CFGC continue to lie about it. You would have to be lying to say that a mere law can stop an insane act. Worse still the law they enacted guaranteed it would happen again..Another emotionally disturbed fellow did attempt to repeat L'Ecole Polytechnique.

Kimveer Gill went to Dawson College he had a licence and he had registered firearms. He then broke every regulation in the firearms act and opened fire on students there. What stopped the repeat of Polytechnique was 2 ARMED Police officers who just happen to be there. That is correct it requires a gun to stop a gunman. Dawson College is positive proof of the failure of Gun Control. I notice it is rarely mentioned..