Fascinating, isn't it?  All we here is cost-containment in medicine.  The need for rationing.  Tom Daschle said, some time ago, (and I paraphrase) that innovation was just too expensive.  We need to cut back, apparently.

Oops, the swine-flu arrived!  Suddenly, we want innovation, and we want it yesterday!  We want vaccines and medications on the fast-track!  We don't know why the last administration cut flu preparation!  Let's do more!  Where are the great minds at the CDC?  Who are the great epidemiologists and virologists?  What can they tell us?  Can we be saved from the pandemic?

Well, all in all we're probably over-reacting.  People die of garden-variety influenza every year.  Thousands of them, in fact.  Could this turn into a deadly pandemic?  Sure.  SARS could have as well.  But only time will tell.

My point is just this.  We should be careful cutting back on innovation.  We value our health, the lives of our children, the quality of our health-care.  We value them tremendously!  Innovation is good, as it saves lives.

It seems that cutting health-care dollars makes sense as long as the person doing the cutting isn't in danger.  Americans in large cities are freaking-out over every passing glance or brush of a Hispanic person.  Those Americans want the best of the best so that they can stay healthy.  Cutting costs is only good when you cut the money that other people spend. 

By the way, why are we worried?  Wouldn't some pandemic deaths cut the 'exploding population?'  Wouldn't it reduce green-house gases (after the initial wave of decomposition, that is)? 

Hmmm.  Maybe we aren't as over-populated as we thought.  Maybe, when faced with the possibility of death from something as mundane and insulting as 'swine flu,' even ardent human-hating, earth loving leftists are OK with the current population, and our general willingness to spend money to stay alive!

Edwin

For years now, I've been telling friends that I fully expect to land in prison one day; not because I knock over liquor stores, steal cars, cheat on my taxes or make inappropriate advances towards young ladies.  No, I'll end up there because I have the wrong opinions.  Take this post, cut it out and put it in the time-capsule.  Because we'll have political prisons in this country; probably in my lifetime. 

Why is that?  Because the freedom to express ideas is no longer valued by those on the political left.  Ironically, free speech was a traditionally liberal idea, in the old, noble meaning of liberal as something which advanced human liberty.  Now, free speech is an annoyance.  There are constant attempts to circumvent the 'wrong' opinions, whether through things like the fairness doctrine,  through 'speech police' on university campuses or as in other countries such as Canada and the UK, by calling unpleasant speech a 'human rights' violation and offering fines and imprisonment to those who speak out in unwelcome ways.  Read a bit about columnist Mark Steyn and his struggles in the Great White North,  read about the European and Canadian tendency to prosecute pastors who speak out against homosexuality from the pulpit; if you do you'll know that trouble is a-brewin'. 

'But isn't that extreme?  Political prisons in the land of the free?'  Not a bit.  The reason I know is that I have tried to have conversations or correspondence with ardent liberals, and the interactions often end in shouting, profanity and the ubiquitous, inflammatory word 'whatever,' on the part of the so called progressive. 

Well, if these folks come to power, do you think they'll tolerate engaging and enlightened dialogue?  No, they'll fine first, then censure, then call for re-education and ultimately, for those of us who are 'hard cases,' they'll imprison.  The reason being, 'tolerance' doesn't exist.  And since a good society can't 'tolerate' the wrong opinions, the only way to manage those opinionated folks will be to lock them away and deny them access to other more enlightened humans, or to media outlets. 

If you think I'm wrong, that's fine.  Maybe I'm just too paranoid.  But go to a group of liberals and tell them you don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, tell them you think abortion is murder and tell them you think that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or form civil unions because it violates scriptural guidelines. Tell them that any sex outside of marriage between a man and woman is sinful.  Tell them that profit is good and socialism is bad; and that you have the historical evidence to prove it. 

Then sit back and watch the lather form.  They won't pull out texts or articles.  For all their scientific atheism and love of rational thought, they won't refute you calmly, or engage in 'dialogue,' over a glass of Merlot while referring to scholarly articles.  They'll fairly explode. 

When intolerance of another opinion becomes that vicious, the only way people (without a spiritual bed-rock of concern for human equality) can manage it is to shut it up and put it away. 

So, reserve my room in the prison.  I think and say all of the wrong things.  And eventually, as is already happening in modern democracies elsewhere, people like me will end up in deep trouble. 

At least I won't have to worry about whether I put away enough money for retirement!

Edwin 

In an ever green world, one wonders about the sincerity of modern Americans.  Just this morning I saw a news clip about a black bear being removed from a tree in a Connecticut neighborhood.  He stopped in, took a nap, then the next thing he knew there was a tranquilizer dart in his bear-butt and he was falling onto a net, only to be hoisted off into a distant forest.

So, let me ask, since we are struggling to snatch the earth back from anthropogenic disaster into a more harmonious state with nature, or Gaia, or some other nebulous state of primordial bliss, why do we have to remove bears from trees in suburbia?  Let me get this straight:  humans are bad, humans don't belong, humans are wrecking the world (and for all we know the known universe).  But humans are willing to exercise their fiat to take innocent, sleeping bears out of their neighborhoods? 

Fossil fuels, bad.  Nuclear power, bad.  Urban sprawl, bad.  Meat, bad.  Fishing, bad.  Hunting, bad.  Cars, bad.  Mankind, bad.  Bears, bad?  I don't get it.  If we really want a return to nature, wouldn't a few large predators, on the order of 300 pounds, be good for mankind?  Wouldn't it help global warming, or prevent the next ice-age, or reduce human consumption of natural resources if bears, wolves, mountain lions and other critters just snatched up a few people now and then?  How do we draw the line?  Humanity as a whole is a disease, but our individual safety is far more important than a poor, weary bear getting a good nap in a nice neighborhood?

Or, could it be, that even the most ardent environmental suburbanites consider themselves, after all, the top of the biological ladder?  Interesting.  Danger and the risk of death have a way of making us see the world more clearly.  I wonder how many deaths will have to occur, how terrible a famine will have to descend, for mankind to stop the global warming madness that is enveloping us.  Probably as many as it takes to reach suburbia and the nicer areas of large cities.

I wonder. 

And I hope that old bear got back to sleep in the woods, and woke up with odd, hung-over dreams of houses, trees, dogs, little girls and bowls of porridge.

Edwin

            Do humans belong here, on earth?  Take a minute and ask yourself.  In an age of environmental concerns, in which we are attempting to address the way we use natural resources like food,  water and energy, in an election cycle when global warming is on the minds of many, do we humans have any place on this planet?  I’ll tell you what I think in a minute.

            If you pay much attention to debates on the environment, or watch television shows about all the ‘impending catastrophes,’ you might get the sense that we humans don’t really have a stake in the game.  There are even books and television specials about how nice earth will be after we’re gone.  As if the planet will say ‘whew,’ and wipe its brow in relief.

            Some people seem positively giddy at the idea, oddly intrigued and thrilled that we might boil like shrimp in the pot of rising sea levels, be frozen by a new ice age or obliterated by a crashing meteorite.    

            Many wax nostalgic for the days when great beasts roamed the earth without so many annoying, pesky hominids leaving carbon footprints everywhere.  They think wistfully of the times when plants weren’t poisoned by mankind’s toxic chemicals, animals not slaughtered, and all Darwin’s creatures lived in the selfless, peaceful pursuit of positive mutations leading to changing bodies and new species.  Well, not peaceful or selfless, but at least there were less people.

            The constant question seems, ‘what have humans done?’  Pollute the world, butcher each other, pock-mark the land with the infectious rash of houses and businesses.  We are, it seems a parasite on dear mother earth.  The world and its beauties, the earth and its resources are too good for the likes of us.

            Tragically, young people are embracing this lesson.  Children are coming to the conclusion that they don’t belong.  Children are being taught, by extreme environmentalists, the implicit lesson that humans are the problem and their place is…nowhere.  Not in homes that take up green spaces, and for goodness sake, not in the green spaces themselves!

            So do we belong?  What do we tell the little ones, now that they are growing up?  Do we tell them to spare the earth their misery and stop reproducing?  Do we tell them to stop eating and polluting the earth with farming?  Do we tell them to leave the seas and forests in peace?  Do we tell them, as we would like to tell other parasites, to die and leave their host alone? 

            I’ll tell you what I think.  I think that however you slice it, however you spin it, however you may hate it, humans do belong on the earth.  See, it doesn’t matter if you are what some so derisively call ‘a religionist’ (believer to the rest of us), or if you are an ardent Darwinist, you can’t ignore the very real fact that we’re here.

            To those of us who believe God created the world, well, we figure if He put us here, then that’s good enough reason to stay and enjoy the place.  But to those who are Darwinists, well let’s all give ourselves a pat on the back as one of the most successful organisms in the universe (as far as we know).  Our genetic ancestors clawed, scraped, survived, reproduced, thought and dreamed their way to the top of a pretty perilous and difficult pinnacle of life.  Ergo, we belong because we earned it.

            Now, here’s the thing.  Neither viewpoint gives us license to destroy the gift we have.  If we believe God put us here, we have to believe he expects us to treat the place nicely.  And if we believe we rose through the ranks to take possession of it, we ought to be careful to preserve it so that we can keep evolving. 

            But the fact remains that we belong, and our presence is good for the earth.  Alone among the species, we are concerned for other species.  Alone among the species, we have both the power to destroy our environment and the will to heal and renew it.

             The unspoken truth is that our minds and efforts constitute enormous natural resources that may one day accomplish more than we can imagine, for ourselves and for the earth; and possibly beyond both.

            So let’s never, ever, leave our children with the sense that they don’t belong.  Because any way you spin it, they did inherit the earth.  And they don’t deserve any guilt for that.

Have a great day,

Edwin