A loony sect of modern flagellants

There is one good thing about the lunatic "global warming" catechism now taught our youth in the mandatory government youth propaganda camps :

When they are finally forced to admit that the globe has been cooling again, not warming, for the past decade, yet proceed to demand precisely the same remedies for "global cooling" (which they will cleverly dub "climate change") as they did for "global warming" -- that is to say higher electric bills, more government controls, taxes sufficient to cripple our industrial economy and generally lower our standard of living in keeping with the world socialist doctrine that America and particularly the "capitalist rich" must be "punished" and "made to sacrifice" in penitence for our former prosperity -- there is finally a decent chance they'll simply be laughed out of town.

"The same punishments to be inflicted on us in retribution for global cooling, as you prescribed for us in punishment for global warming?! Ha ha! Good one! Have you heard the one about the prostitute and the midget?"

For the record:

1) The globe is now again cooling, albeit infinitesimally, just as Time and Newsweek declared in major feature stories back in 1975 -- and the next Ice Age is indeed the real problem, since (if the world were to warm again), modest warming is actually good for us, since more people die of cold than heat, and warm climates allow us to grow more food.

2) The modest fluctuations in question, of a couple of degrees per century, are of minimal importance to anyone. Even the "rising ocean levels" predicted by the extremists' worst-case scenarios are on the order of one inch.

3) During years when the globe has warmed, man-made carbon dioxide has had no significant impact on that warming, which is caused by the oceans and mostly the sun. (Mars warms in a rhythm which matches the Earth's. Do we believe this is because Martians are driving too many SUVs and burning too much coal?) Mankind creates about 3 percent of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide, which is not the largest contributor to the blessed greenhouse effect, in the first place. Water vapor is.

4) Even if we could de-populate and throw America back into the Stone Age tomorrow, and even if man-made carbon dioxide did contribute in some measure to global warming, this would still have no effect on the climate, since the authority of Mr. Reid and Mr. Obama does not extend to India and China, which are building new coal-fired power plants every day.

"Man-made global warming" is a scam promoted by those who want more taxes, more control of our lives, less enjoyment of the freedom represented by private automobiles and single-family homes -- a modern sect of flagellants who (when you come right down to it) view mankind as a pox and parasite on an otherwise lovely world full of weeds and bugs more deserving of care, opportunity and "protection" than our own children, a sect who would view as a "regretful necessity" any government policy that could reduce the number of humans by at least half.

I'm not making this stuff up. See www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92557; www.rightsidenews.com/200907035325/energy-and-environment/climate-delusions.html;

or www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will021509.php3.

Or, if you're willing to do a little old-fashioned book reading, try the fine new book "Climate of Extremes/Global Warming Science They Don't Want You To Know," from the Cato Institute, by Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr., or "Re-Thinking Green/Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy," from the Independent Institute, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close.

These are thoughtful, well-documented books. Choose your favorite and buy copies for all your friends.

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Meantime, a number of thoughtful respondents to my hypothetical example, last week, of a small group of freedom-lovers attempting to set up a tax-free town in the countryside, finding their efforts stymied by squatting socialist newcomers who promptly "vote" to create taxation, unionized government schools, etc., suggest the answer is to "not allow any voting mechanism other than unanimous consent, the only voting mechanism compatible with the Zero Aggression Principle."

Sounds good, but how to go about the "not allowing"?

American freedom-lovers are currently surrounded by a casually socialist majority of looters, trained in the government propaganda camps to believe "making the rich pay for the things which are demanded by all the people" is "only fair," since they "have more to begin with."

Go to the store. Buy $10 worth of stuff. The clerk asks you for $10.81. Reply that you will gladly pay the $10, but not the 81 cents in tax, since you gave no consent to this levy, which was rather imposed by a majority of state lawmakers you never voted for under the mistaken impression that "something other than unanimous consent is compatible with the Zero Aggression Principle."

Even if we assume your cashier is well-read in libertarian philosophy and Austrian economics -- a bit of a stretch -- he's still likely to say, "I know what you mean, bub, but if you don't pay the 81 cents I can't let you have the stuff. That 8.1 percent would come out of my paycheck at the end of the day, assuming I still had a job, and if I let everyone do that it would add up to more than they're paying me, here."

Attempts to "not allow" the withholding of tax from our paychecks will have equally predictable, albeit more onerous, outcomes.

And thus we "allow" the kleptocrats to take 8 percent, 24 percent -- heck, effective combined tax rates for "the rich" will soon top 51 percent, again -- of our wealth and our earnings, compounding their Depression-breeding levies every day, because this doesn't yet seem to be the perfect day to die in a shoot-out with the armed agents of the kleptocracy.

I have no fast or easy solution. I just find advice as to what we should "not allow" to be not terribly useful, unless those bestowing the advice are going to tell us how to "not allow" it, in circumstances where those who believe in the beneficial effects for all of freedom and property rights remain considerably outnumbered.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "The Ballad of Carl Drega" and "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/ and http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/vin/.