Pelosi, with raised fist, squawked, "Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs."
The shamefulness of the spectacle of the passage of the Climate Bill did not spring from the squeaked two votes "win" (217 would have denied passage; 219 was secured) nor Pelosi's embarrassing squawks.
No. It oozed from the now predictable spectacle of Democans and Republicrats birthing yet another monstrosity of oppression.
Powerful parasites teamed with clever-thinking thugs, clueless confidence men and large numbers of brainwashed bellies to disgorge the latest bread and circus baby that would have made Machiavelli proud. Machiavelli knew all the ways to get people to voluntarily consent to their own enslavement.
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We witnessed it live on C-Span. It was an ugly sight. The very nature of the State apparatus itself was on display. Clearly, the tyranny ruling our land hasn't been established by force or by inheritance; it has been elected. Those elected have obviously worked feverishly to convert a short-term shot in the driver's seat into a near-hereditary entitlement for themselves and their friends, with the single exception, known to me, being a humble doctor from Texas who has even refused pension.
The men and women who comprise Congress may not be evil, but they are aggressively designing our economic and cultural prisons. Many of us are as convinced as they are that the common good is their goal. It is untrue, but how has this palatable corruption and deceit come about? Two strategies one material and one ideological were implemented.
First, elected representatives got as many as they wanted in on the take. This is the raw purchase of consent. That tactic attracted a hard core of powerful people benefitting from the pillage. Waxman, Markey, Pelosi and Obama are busy this minute distributing promised loot to big business special interests. The other side of the aisle will get theirs also. It is equal-opportunity plunder.
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Second, an intellectual propaganda network bamboozled us with tales of a large planetary cause, a looming crisis that they would avert. Such perception management permitted the despots to appear wise and protective. Some participant-props had been awarded Nobel prizes. Most garnered authority credentials. Anthropogenic global warming was, this time, the crisis-opiate that girded our loins and softened our forthcoming sacrifice. We are duped into believing that we, or the planet, will benefit by the micro-regulation and macro-taxation of our behaviors. Prostituted scientists and "climatologists" in black robes had christened natural, life-sustaining carbon dioxide a "poisonous pollutant." The over-reaching Environmental Protection Agency teamed with the pathetic Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to steamroller legislation before their gig was up. (Way too many inquiring minds had been exposing the AGW urgency, as presented, to be fraud. The Australian Senate is rejecting its own version of Cap-and-Trade. The EPA has been caught red-handed censoring a global-warming study that was inconvenient. New EU Parliament Group includes climate skeptics. The Polish Academy of Science is challenging man-made global warming. The earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of CO2. Green jobs are found to be a cost not a benefit to our national economy.)
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Thus, in two subtle strategies, we have strengthened the chains that will keep us bound to tyranny. The bad-seed baby H.R. 2454: the American Clean Energy and Security Act sets in place a gargantuan government army of bureaucrats to fleece trillions from an already burdened and sinking middle-class sheeple. Rationing energy will give this mob the power over who literally lives and who dies. There is no part of this inflicted pain that will gain any significant reduction of global warming. There is every piece of this inflicted pain that will be impoverishing Americans through its economy-killing mandates and, very likely, be precipitating a trade war by taxing our large trade partner, China.
Having created this new monstrosity, some members of the House may be feeling the shame. There had been, after all, a refreshing crack in the serious work of plunder and obfuscation when Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) began to read from page after page of the 300 additional pages that dropped onto the already massive 1200 page bill at 3:09 just that same morning. Mind-numbing details gave mere glimpses of the newly unleashed tyranny to come. Guffaws were a rational and healthy response as many members realized the absurdity of pretense that any of them had had time to read and comprehend what he was being asked to vote on. So much for transparency.
This awful bill passes now to the Senate. Perhaps Senators will actually read it. Having read it, perhaps there are enough Senators with integrity to defeat it.
House members have opportunities to redeem themselves. They can repeal laws. Begin now. And, they hold the most important power. The House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States of America constitutionally holds the power of the purse. House Representatives can, in fact, strangle oppressive activities by withdrawing financial support. Just cut off funds and wars will wither from the Executive vine. Just deny money and plunderers will have to turn to production. Tough love could find a home in the House.
And, individually, tough wills could find a way out from under this tyranny. We can just say no. We can withdraw consent. The Prince had his Machiavelli to show him the way to rule. We have our Gandhi and our tienne de La Botie (the first libertarian political philosopher in the Western world) to show us how to undo the seemingly overwhelming power of the ruling State. Murray Rothbard uncovered those liberty-saving strategies in The Political Thought of tienne de La Botie. Listen carefully to his sage and stirring words.
Tea Parties, secession movements, bailout protests, and plummeting approval ratings of both elected and unelected "leaders" show that thoughtful citizens are restless. When our monopoly cartel central bank is transparently audited, the statists' failed experiments and unhealthy entanglements will be exposed. Unexamined faith in government will face fresh and critical examination. If it withdraws its consent to servitude, free society will flourish.
June 29, 2009