The Futility of War?

Clint Eastwood, on the message of his two new movies, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima":

"I think every war has a certain parallel in the futility of it and that's one of the reasons for telling these stories -- they are not pro-war stories." ***

"I grew up in the war pictures in the 1940s where everything was propagandized. (In) all the movies, we were the good guys and everybody else were bad guys," [Eastwood] said. "I just wanted to tell two different stories where there were good guys and bad guys everywhere and just tell something about the human condition."

Except that WWII wasn't futile. It was a life or death struggle for freedom, against the forces of evil. And had the US and the Allies (who really were the "good guys") chosen not to fight the fascist Imperial Japanese, or Nazi Germany, (who really were the "bad guys"), the world undoubtedly would be a darker place.

War is a dark, terrible, awful thing. It destroys families and often shatters the lives of the soldiers on either side. Innocent people die, and cities are demolished. At no time in the national debate should we loose sight of that. But as terrible as war is, sometimes the alternative is worse. As John Stewart Mill said,

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

Some wars are futile. The one we currently find ourselves waging is not. The choices we make now will determine the fates of millions for centuries to come. Life or death? Freedom or slavery? Theocratic Fascism or liberal secular democracy? Calling these choices "futile" is to discount these differences; and to declare our disagreements illegitimate. It is to say that our history is no more noble than that of the USSR's. Or to Nazi Germany's. It is the worst kind of moral relativism.

The veterans of WWII were fighting for more than futility, as the millions they liberated can attest to. I am a fan of Clint's movies, and I even look forward to seeing these. But I can only shake my head that the disappointing simplemindedness of this American icon.

Global Warming - Betting Our Life(styles) On It

The Canadian National Post has a phenomenal series profiling the so-called global warming "Deniers," which put the lie to much of the slander heaped upon the scientists who dare to defy the groupthink and junk science that has become the new Religion of the Left. Indeed, more and more and more scientists are coming forward with the courage to stand up to this nonsense.

Indeed - it's difficult to figure out why this global "consensus" exists in the first place in the face of so little supporting evidence, until you understand the agenda of the pushers of this insipidness - anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism. Why would China, India, France, Russia, and the multitude of nations who want strong economies sign off on this suicide manifesto? Easy - they are either exempt from the proposed regulations or can ignore them without consequence, and they know that because of our integrity, the US will suffer the most from these policies. And the socialists have the perfect excuse for overarching government control of our property. It's like a perverse version of Ronald Reagan's outspending of the Soviets - our economic and political competitors (even the ones here at home) may suffer, too, but they know we'll suffer more. And they're gambling it will hurt us so much that they can gain supremacy before we come to our senses.

And I wonder if the academics, who twist their data to a pre-ordained conclusion so as not to lose next year's grant money (and to justify more of it) understand that without a robust economy, society won't have the tax revenue to fund luxuries like insulated, ivory tower intellectuals making 6 figures? (Judging from academia's decades-old love affair with militant socialism, this question unfortunately answers itself.)

Not that there aren't true believers, just as there are in any religion. And they fulfill every stereotype of the naive and hypocritical evangelical adherent - basing their own "science" on anecdote (whether they remember more or less snow growing up 10 years ago in Minnesota) and blind allegiance to every word of The Prophet Al. With a straight face, they exhort people to conserve energy by (not kidding) unplugging their cell phone chargers when they aren't actually charging their phone - while burning uncountable carbon atoms powering their amps, riding in their busses and private jets, and keeping the lights on in their many mansions.

If a single one of these mindless celebs (and that includes Al Gore and even - dare I say it - His Royal Dumbo Ears the Prince) actually feared that humanity faced immediate danger to its very existence, they would all move out of their mansions and into one bedroom flats and keep their thermostats at 60 all winter. None of them would travel unless absolutely necessary - and then certainly not on private jets! None of them would heat their pools - or even have pools. Every Ferrari and tricked out Cadillac would be abandoned. Never again would they buy foreign made luxury items - Armani suits, BMWs, and Italian marble slabs take a lot of marine diesel to cart across the sea (not to mention the overboard discharges that taint the oceans with waste oil). Every dollar they made beyond the $30,000 needed to live day to day would be donated to environmental causes, European governments, the UN, and buying controlling stock in oil companies so as to shut them down. They would donate their estates to build new nuclear power plants. They would all switch to acoustic guitars, and beg people to stay home and read books instead of driving to the movie theater or even turning on their TVs. Democrats would denounce NASCAR fans.

You see, our true priorities, fears, and agendas are shown not in what we say, but in what we do. And none of the global warming cultists, by their energy gobbling, lavish lifestyle supporting, conspicuous consumption actions, are actually afraid of global warming. It's not a priority to them. Their agenda is not to stop polar ice from melting, it's to look cool and feel like they matter beyond the fantasy worlds in which they live.

Environmental policy is important. Pollution choking the air we breath and the water we drink is a serious threat to our health and economic vibrancy, as well as to the inherent value our natural places provide to our souls just by existing. There are plenty of very good reasons to limit dirty emissions and discharges, and to regulate our industries so we don't expose entire communities to deadly chemicals. And the climate is not stable - it will warm and cool, maybe even dramatically, and humans will have to adapt. Just as we've always done. But none of this justifies the Global Warming absurdity currently underway.

Understanding what the true threats are - and more importantly, what they aren't - is crucial to crafting policies that actually solve problems as opposed to making rich celebrities feel good about themselves. And in solving problems, we must recognize that when we monkey with the economy, it doesn't just hurt the profits of millionaires working for Exxon - it stifles job growth, entrepreneurship, tax revenue, technological innovation, and class mobility. It destroys the ability of the third world to improve their living conditions, leading inevitably to more poverty, disease, famine, war, fighting over resources, ethnic strife, and violent tribalism - conditions not easily remedied with a dike. And the solutions offered thus far involve more epherial (but no less destructive) dangers, threatening individual freedom, state and national sovereignty, and property rights.

That's right, environmentalists. No free lunch. Your proposals are, if implemented, going to doom millions to poverty and early death. All for a problem even the UN Doomsday Report says is "unstoppable." Just so everyone's clear what the tradeoff is.

The global warming fad is a frightening harbinger of Western un-seriousness. We half heartedly (or not at all) fight against the rising Global Jihad - a REAL clear, present, and immediate threat to our existence and to our freedoms - instead choosing to spend billions of dollars (usually of other people's money) to combat something which even if it actually exists can't be stopped at this point (at least not without dooming ourselves to the poverty of a pre-industrial existence). We're willing to stifle foreign investment that would substantially reduce the risk of military conflict just so John Kerry will have nicer things to say to fascist Mullahs about us the next time he takes his wife's private jet to Europe.

The enviro-cultists are ironically betting their lives and lifestyles that they're wrong, and that they'll fail in their lobbying efforts. I'm also betting my life (and my own lifestyle), but on the assumption that I'm right. I'm going to continue to participate in the US industrial economy, use electricity unnecessarily to do things like watch TV and use this computer. My wife and I are going to buy more house than we absolutely need, and heat it in the winter. I will buy things I don't need that were delivered to the store by a truck burning fossil fuels. And in 50 years when emissions are tripled and the Florida peninsula still exists, I'm going to say "I told you so."

Hopefully, the cultists won't have to apologize for having needlessly tanked our economy in the meantime.