Energy Independence: Security

Because cold fusion research commands about as much respect in the scientific community as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, my original hope for a solution to the world’s impending energy crisis and feared global climate change is quashed. Sometimes the stuff of science fiction becomes reality…rockets to the moon, for example. But nothing happens if there are no people left in the scientific community who see the possibilities. With regards to cold fusion, very few see the possibilities.

I had so hoped Hollywood had gotten this one right…To tell Chavez and Putin and the Saudis what they can do with their oil, was a message I’ve hoped would be delivered in my lifetime.

Fission reactors work, the problem is the waste. We don’t know what to do with it and it’s very poisonous stuff.

Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the cosmos, fuels our world, presently. Whether we’re burning fossil fuels, renewable bio-fuels, or charged hydrogen fuel cells, the power element is hydrogen. Hydrogen burns clean. The problem is producing clean-burning hydrogen requires energy. Today, that usually means using carbon fuels.

Extracting the hydrogen from fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—powers our world but releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a green house gas. That’s not good. Whether or not we’ve done any real or permanent damage to the planet yet is not the issue. The fact of the matter is that the greenhouse effect is real…it can happen. Planet Venus is evidence of this fact. If we continue to pollute our atmosphere with carbon dioxide, Al Gore and the rest of the fear mongering [Medieval, anti-capitalist] environmentalist movement will get their wish. It might take a thousand years or more, but eventually, their truth will out.

My reason for supporting the development of alternatives to carbon-based fuels has little to do with melting ice caps and everything to do with security. America and the rest of the free world cannot remain dependant upon irrational, authoritarian regimes for our energy needs. To do so means two things: constant war somewhere in the world and a deterioration of the standard of living for all Americans.

The fact that there are so many clean alternatives to fossil fuels, and all, including wind, solar, and geothermal are currently in use, means that the barriers to energy independence are not a fact of nature. It is not science that has failed to present feasible solutions. The barrier to energy independence and security is man made. It is our lack of will to make the necessary investments in infrastructure to bring these alternatives on line. Apparently, our concerns about energy security will not be addressed seriously until another 9/11 whacks us into action.

So what’s the biggest obstacle in the way of developing this and other cheap and clean energy? Government, of course. Politicians will claim free markets “aren’t working,” that entrepreneurs can’t find ways to harvest energy profitably, that we need government to create uniformity and safety. Politicians on both sides of the isle [Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich] will offer their “leadership.” Politicians will fail to deregulate the energy industry in the name of what’s good for the community and effectively stifle private creativity, productivity, and investment. Energy entrepreneurs will be denied the opportunity to be the 21st Century’s J.D. Rockefeller, while politicians grant lucrative contracts to their buddies, the political entrepreneurs, who specialize not in energy production, but rather, in collecting government contracts. This is how the transcontinental railroad was built in the second half of the 19th Century: This is why the railroad industry has not been profitable since World War I.

Political entrepreneurs make their money up front. They have no incentive to work efficiently or build well. They’ve risked nothing. The politicians have given them other people’s money with which to build. Market entrepreneurs risk their own money, and they make money only if they build an energy production facility that works. They have the incentive to operate efficiently and build well. They’ve risked everything.

If the private sector is allowed to work this problem, I see every major metropolitan area in the United States as an opportunity for an energy entrepreneur to set up shop, provide clean, cheap energy, and reap just profits.

Election 2008: The Case for McCain

Because most Americans don’t know we are in the war for our existence, polls indicate that the economy is the number one issue of Decision 2008. Because Americans can’t list two bills passed by Congress this session and most know nothing about economics, they tend to blame the president when the economy goes south. About half the country believes the Democratic candidates when they promise a potpourri of tax-payer funded “solutions” to the problems.

Hilary Clinton promises to:
[HillaryClinton.com]

>Lower taxes for middle class Americans;
>Provide quality, affordable health care for every American;
>Make college affordable and accessible;
>Confront growing problems in the housing market;
>Harness innovation to create high-wage jobs for the 21st Century.

Barack Obama’s list of promises is almost identical.

Democratic economic “solutions” without exception attempt to correct the injustice of reality with brute force. They've convince half the country that free markets don’t work and that government is the solution. To suggest that government is the engine of “innovation” that drives America’s economic success is most dishonest and irresponsible. It is a conclusion that denies history. Democratic economic theory is about as useful as astrology or alchemy. Both candidates think government-created jobs actually grow the economy, for example, so they would end tax cuts for the wealthy…you know, the entrepreneurs. In fact, every one of the Democratic proposals requires a thorough clubbing to death of the most productive Americans, and because all of these “solutions” are funded by taxes, none grow the economy. New jobs in the private sector grow wealth in this country. The redistribution of wealth creates nothing.

Recently, Hillary Clinton signed on to legislation co-sponsored by Barach Obama that would expand the role of the Federal Housing Administration in the forced restructuring of home loans on the verge of foreclosure. The bill actually enables government to buy the loans in order to keep the “buyers” in “their” homes. Defending his boss, Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling, explains the psycho-epistemology of the statist Left:

"This is too big of a crisis for us to let either ideology or fears of political demagoguing to keep us from putting every option on the table."

Read it again. What Sperling is encouraging us all to do here is to leave our brains at the door so that our leaders can do something….anything! It doesn’t matter if the solution is anti-capitalist. It doesn’t matter if the solution is brutish and irrational. It doesn’t matter if a terrible injustice is about to be done. This crisis, according to Sperling, is too big for philosophy. Too big for ideas. Too big for justice. Too big for integrity. Don’t think! [Hitler told the mob] ACT!

McCain has promised to withdraw government from the economy…to de-tax, deregulate, and further devolve federal intervention in the economy. If John McCain knows nothing more about how a free market economy should work, he has already stated the better view. More capitalism. Less government intervention. Creditors and debtors must honor their lawful contracts. Winners get to enjoy their success. Loser must accept the consequences of their poor choices.

Regardless of who the Democrats nominate, on the economy John McCain is the candidate who threatens my freedom least.

Unlike his Born Again predecessor, McCain pays the obligatory lip service to the Christian Right but doesn’t buy into much of their self-righteous intolerance, and he has said as much in the past. However much he tries to distance himself from his Election 2000 statements, when McCain railed against Christian orthodoxy he was speaking his mind.

“…political intolerance by any political party is neither a Judeo-Christian nor an American value. The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country. Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.”

It’s a shame when a “straight talker” like McCain thinks he has to pander to these people in order to win the Republican nomination. I don’t think he should. I don’t think he has to. These people are not the base of the Republican Party [if they ever were]. Look at Huckabee’s numbers. There they are. That is the so-called Christian conservative base of the Republican Party. McCain won the nomination without them. There are far more Independents and secular Republicans than Christian fundamentalists. Very unscientific, I know, but I’d be willing to bet that most people who call themselves “Independent” left the Republican Party because of the Christian Right. I know that’s why I left the party. [The rest of the Independents are former Democrats who still believe in capitalism.]

In 1999, John McCain expressed acceptance of Roe v. Wade on behalf of the woman who would die turning to illegal, unsafe procedures should Roe be overturned. Excepting his 2007 reversal on abortion and his vote in the Senate expressing his belief that life begins at conception, I don’t think I’ve ever heard McCain utter a socially conservative view. That’s a real plus. A cancer patient and supporter of stem cell research, I feel confident McCain will reverse the Bush Administration’s anti-science policies. McCain may in fact hold other socially conservative views [gay marriage, for example], but of two things you can be sure: 1. He won’t run on these issues as Bush did in 2004, and 2. once McCain is in office, the social conservative agenda will cease to exist until the next
election cycle.

John McCain is no zealot.

He is no Crusader, either. Unlike our current president who declares war on fundamentalism of the Muslim stripe, never realizing he represents Christian fundamentalists who share the altruistic-collectivist values of the enemy, who would resort to the same sort of violence as al-Qaida if ever they were faced with moral extinction, John McCain declares war on al-Qaida because they attacked the United States and murdered thousands of innocents. He has no ambition to remake the world in our own image. McCain is still fighting the legitimate war of retaliation against the perpetrators of 9/11. He’s the only candidate who even mentions Bin Laden. A McCain administration would continue the fight against those who seek to end our way of life. He will fight them in Iraq and anywhere else their ugly heads pop up. He is the only candidate running who understands the immutable nature of the enemy we fight. He’s the only one who knows we are at war.

Family Matters

Happy Birthday Marc!
No comments lately. Does that mean you're converted?
Reality is a beautiful thing, and I REALLY want you to have an excellent year. See you soon.
Donn

Election 2008: Obama’s Rev. Wrong

Whenever I vote for President of the United States I know I am voting for the lesser of two evils. My vote has always gone to the candidate who threatens my freedom less. In April of 2008, I find myself stuck with a somewhat larger task. I have to determine which of the candidates threatens my freedom least. That’s right. There are still three candidates out there with a real shot at winning the presidency.

The Republicans are set. They’ve nominated John McCain. The Democrats have two candidates who have split the popular vote and the elected delegates more or less down the middle, making it impossible for either one of them to secure the nomination without the votes of the Democratic establishment, the super delegates. If the nomination is left to the party establishment, I think, that is a scenario that favors Hilary Clinton. She and Bill have been rubbing elbows with these people for far longer than newcomer, Barack Obama. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. If Hilary does manage to win the nomination, by hook and by crook, the Democratic Party will be DOA come November as blacks and young people stay home disgusted, feeling betrayed. The Democratic Party is not going to let that happen. The party super delegates are going to decide in favor of Obama, and [if they know what’s good for them] they’re going to do so before the party convention.

Will they have made the better choice?

There are no important differences between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama on the domestice front. Both would-be presidents deny the virtues of the capitalist economy that made each of them possible. Both tell Americans that they have a right to food, clothing, shelter, and health care, and that it is the government’s responsibility to provide these things. Both demand European-style social safety nets be constructed, ignoring and denying the fact that such nets may be woven only with the fibers of our freedom. Both would create a nation of beggars, losers, and looters—people who willing give up their rights as free men in order to create a government equipped to spare them the responsibility of living in the real world. The only question left then is which of the two has a better understanding of the world in which we live?

Maybe it’s because she was a Senator from New York on 9/11; maybe it’s because of her service on the Senate Armed Services Committee; maybe it’s because she watched her husband wage war for eight years as President of the United States; but Hilary Clinton [despite her movement to the left during the primaries] has a much less dangerous view of America’s standing in the world. She understands we have to fight to preserve what we have created here and around the world. She will fight. Conversely, Barach Obama has said he will meet with our enemies without precondition. He will lend credibility to the likes of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meeting with them as “equals.” He would crawl into the United Nations and beg forgiveness for American arrogance during the Bush Administration. He would empower our enemies to bold action against us all in the name of peace…unconditional peace that hands the world over to thugs and assassins.

While Clinton and Obama have dangerous, socialist economic policies in common, Obama is by far the more dangerous of the two. He embodies the kind of subjectivism possible only in America where liberty seems free and survival is relatively easy. He is a man who can not, or refuses to, distinguish between good and evil. He will not disassociate himself from the later. He will compromise his values. Barack Obama suffered twenty years of hatred and racism spewed from the pulpit by the “man of the cloth” who taught him about Jesus. He sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for twenty years and spoke not one word in protest. He brought his two beautiful daughters there to be educated by this racist. Twenty years of silence in the face of evil is sanction, and I think, disqualifying.

I’ve had my eye on Barack Obama since the 2004 Democratic Convention. After his red-America, blue-America, one-America speech, I told my students that I thought Obama would in fact be the first black president of the United States. I told them that I thought he’d run in 2112 or 2116. I was surprised when he decided to run from his freshman seat in the senate in 2008. I was even more surprised when he won Iowa and Super Tuesday.
But I was pleased…and I’ll tell you why. I thought an Obama presidency [perhaps even a nomination] would be enough to shut up all of the racist “civil rights” leaders who dominate politics in Tavis Smiley’s “Black America.” To shut up Jesse Jackson, Luis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Cornell West…to shut up all of these racists, I might vote for Barack Obama!

I’ve spent the past twenty years explaining to my students why black candidates win seats in the house but fail to win seats in the senate. “Civil rights” candidates can win in congressional districts where a half-million or more black people live: “Civil rights” candidates cannot win seats in the senate because blacks are a minority in nearly every state. Typical white people will not vote for a candidate who represents only the black people of the state. For blacks to win in the senate they must become candidates who represent all of the people of the state. The Illinois senator won his seat in the senate [virtually unopposed, with all due respect to Alan Keyes] when his Republican opponent’s messy divorce undid his candidacy. But I remember thinking, if Obama made it to the senate he is not a product of “Black America.”

For the first time in American history [because Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice refuse to run], I thought we had a black man who could actually win the White House. Rev. Wright’s words and Barack Obama’s silence convinced me otherwise.

Education: Rewards

People who choose to teach are generally not leaders. They are collectivists who take pride in their altruistic constitution.

A typical teacher is that kid who in the third grade said: I want to be a doctor because I want to help people. The third graders who actually grew up to be doctors are the ones who said: I want to be doctor because I want to understand the human body, disease, how to cure sick people, and earn a decent living. Most teachers think of themselves as care-givers, helpers, nurturers. They believe their work is a service, a service they provide for the good of the community. They believe good teaching is a selfless endeavourer. Care-giver teachers even take pride in their small paychecks, further evidence of their virtue, this sacrifice they believe they are making.

Like nearly all people who live by the altruist code, when these teachers encounter students who don’t need or want “help,” but rather, wish to be challenged intellectually, they fail. They bore the best students in the building to tears and ultimately to open rebellion. Care-giver teachers utterly ignore or fail even to recognize the self-motivated, productive, creative student. If they do notice these sovereign individuals, they react with fear, tagging them “arrogant,” unruly broncos that must be broken. They actively work to break the will of these students with heaps of meaningless work, low-level instruction, group projects, and merciless remediation. Never fully conscious of the actual service they provide for the community, these teachers are The Levelers. Their focus is on the least productive, most needy students. Their purpose is to raise up the bottom. When the low level students fail to rise, The Levelers hammer the top down into submission. There’s no room in the collective for anybody who is too good.

Ayn Rand called this phenomenon: Hatred of the good for being good. [See Rand’s essay The Age of Envy.]

The best among us are forced to sacrifice their dreams, goals, and ambition; forced to apologize for their abilities, hide their talent; forced day after day to perform mindless tasks and volumes of useless, busy work. Why? Because their excellence is perceived as a threat to the self-esteem of the less able. Some school districts have gone so far as to ban “Honor Rolls.” The teachers’ union actively opposes merit pay for successful teachers. The collectivists will not tolerate winners, so we all lose together.

True competition has been removed from the school house. Merit—for both students and teachers—goes unrecognized, unrewarded.

So why do I teach? My reasons are pure selfishness.

I am a lover of humanity, i.e. human knowledge. I am a lover of ideas. I wish to spend my days studying and sharing great ideas.

I teach American Government. I love the principles upon which this country was built. I have a need to spread true understanding of those principles to my students [and to you my faithful reader] because I want this country to survive the Right’s assault on the intellect and the Left’s assault on property rights.

I am sustained by the Eureka smiles of my students. I love spending my days in the company of young people. I love to hear them speak the words: “Thanks…I never thought about things that way before.”

I love seeing my students go on to bigger and better things. Like the proud surgeon of the healthy transplant patient, I share in my students’ success.

I have met dozens of great teachers over the past 20 years. I have made a few good friends. I like working with people who are expert in their subject, thinkers, real teachers.

In twenty years, no school-site administrator has ever given me a hard time. I’ve had a dozen or more “bosses” through the years, and every one of them trusted me and left me alone to do my job.

I love being home with my own children everyday by 3pm, and all day Saturday and Sunday. I love June and July, a week off in October and April, and half of December.

I am pursuing my own happiness…my just reward.