SelwynDuke.com

Is Man a Plague Upon the Earth?

By Selwyn Duke

First there was the anti-Western Westerner, the hate-America-first crowd, and the self-loathing white person. Now we have the anti-human human, who, like General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, seems to think that “the only good human is a dead human!” Of course, the Kum-Gaia-singing misanthropes don’t actually say that; rather, as David Attenborough recently opined, they assert that man is a “plague” whose burgeoning population threatens to do to the planet’s resources what the feds do to the treasury. Now, I already pointed out in a recent piece that Attenborough is factually wrong: The world will in the foreseeable future likely face a population implosion, not an explosion. But he is philosophically wrong as well.

There is no doubt that we should be good shepherds of the Earth. We have a responsibility to conserve resources when possible and should cherish God’s creation. And while we can acknowledge that we all too often fail in that regard, it is quite another thing to call man a “plague,” which clearly implies that he is a troublesome life form deleterious to something more important. Yet the issue here isn’t just that some ascribe greater value to the Earth than to man, or at best equal value. It is the larger questions of why they believe the Earth has any intrinsic value at all and the basis on which that value is assessed.

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The Case for Ending the EPA

By Selwyn Duke

In the Republican presidential debate last evening, some of the candidates passionately stated that the Environmental Protection Agency should be eliminated. It’s a position that sounds strange to some ears. As a respondent in a Fox News focus group said after the debate, and this is a paraphrase, “This all sounds good when you fixate on the minutia, but we can’t just end the EPA.”

This attitude is no surprise. The one exception to the law that it’s easier to destroy than create is big government programs and bureaucracies. Once they’re the status quo and people become accustomed to their existence, folks just cannot imagine how they could live without them. But is it really true that we’d get a visit from the Smog Monster if the EPA went extinct? And does it really advance the good on balance? Let’s examine the matter.

Just recently, the EPA decreed that New York City must place a concrete cover over a 90-acre reservoir in nearby Yonkers — to the tune of $1.6 billion. Now, the city, nanny state though it is, strongly objected to the mandate. The Big Apple just didn’t have the money, and, besides, its own department of environmental protection (NYCDEP) stated that such a move would offer the public a negligible benefit at best.

Read the rest here.

Drill, Baby, Drill . . . Still

By Selwyn Duke

The gulf oil gusher is a disaster of great proportions. We’ve all seen the pictures of petroleum-soaked birds and dead fish, and the area’s economy is on life support. The mishap truly is a tragedy for all, from Gulf residents to English pensioners to marine wildlife to, yes, BP itself. As bad as this is, however, there’s a way to make the situation worse: by compounding it with another tragedy, one both foreseeable and preventable.

Following the Emanualesque motto “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” some would use the Deepwater Horizon accident to push an anti-oil agenda. And given people’s tendency toward emotional reactions, millions of others are willing to support them. It’s much as how there was a hue and cry for gun control after the Columbine and L.I.R.R. massacres. Passion may not govern wisely, as old Mr. Franklin warned, but she sure does govern.

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The Covetous Crew of the COP15

By Selwyn Duke

While Copenhagen seems poised to enjoy a white Christmas, an equally noticeable color in the city was red, with flag-waving communists and socialists protesting and hoisting banners with messages such as “CAPITALISM MEANS WAR” and “CAPITALISM ISN’T WORKING, Crush the system not the climate.” They were well represented within the conference as well, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe and Bolivian President Evo Morales all registering such sentiments. 

The limelight-lusting Chavez, who undermines his nation’s rule of law and suppresses its press with equal vigor, spoke for four times longer than his allotted five minutes, leaving plenty of time to bang his communist drum. Reporting on the Venezuelan’s comments, ABC.net.au, wrote:

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On the Front Lines of Global Warming Hysteria: Your Kids

By Selwyn Duke

When I was a wee lad in elementary school — this was back when global cooling was dogma — we kids had all heard about killer bees. You may remember the story: Scientists in Brazil had bred the African honey bee with a European honey bee and succeeded in creating, well, a really mean bee. These hybrids then escaped from their captors and started spreading throughout the Americas, bullying the nice bees and occasionally killing people. This prompted some sensationalistic stories in the media about the perils of these impudent insects, and we kids were scared. Would K-i-l-l-e-r B-e-e-s (gasp!) be the end of us? I suppose it could have made a good movie. The “Bees from Brazil,” anyone?

Obama Regulatory Pick's Pro-animal Rights and Anti-First Amendment Activism

By Selwyn Duke

It's not surprising that Harvard man Barack Obama wouldn't share late writer William F. Buckley's sentiment that "I would rather be governed by 400 people out of the phone book than the whole faculty of Harvard." In fact, although he won't manage to fill the Congress with the staff of his alma mater, he certainly is making sure his administration is replete with its members.

And Obama is now making another addition to his many Harvard-honed underlings with the nomination of Cass Sunstein to be head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB, a position commonly known as the "regulatory czar."

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Here is a Great Example of Leftist Insanity
Many people find this funny, but to me it's just pathetic. It's a video of a group of leftist activists talking to the trees in a forest. If only it were a spoof.

Ready the straitjackets and rubber trucks.

BILL MAHER: Foolish Rambling about Global Warming
This segment from Bill Maher's show is a good example of what the sheeple are exposed to, and why they are sheeple. As for Maher, he's living proof of why a little knowledge is dangerous. A more smug man there never was, yet he is as nonintellectual as they come.

How to Handle a Child Brainwashed with Environmentalist Propaganda

We all know about how children today are being indoctrinated with environmentalist propaganda.  Well, there is a very distressing but not surprising article here about how a survey has shown that one in three American preteens fear an environmental apolcalypse.  But my focus right now is not on the piece but on a comment left under it by a parent.  This individual, who goes by the handle "Reformed Environ-Mental," offered some great advice to parents who find that their children are bringing environmentalist dogma home with them from school.  Here is what he said:

European Environment Minister Calls Green Position on Climate Change "hysterical psuedo-religion"

By Selwyn Duke

BBC News is running a piece about British Environment Minister Sammy Wilson.  He is one of those rare politically-incorrect European public figures, as he scoffs at the notion of anthropogenic climate change.  Writes the BBC: