"It's hard to tell whether he worries more about the environment or about his calculation that environmentally obtuse Republican candidates get "killed in the suburbs."

Change the political calculation, plug in Dem for Repub, and that applies to Al Gore.

Green this and green that are now political ploys par excellence; global warming has replaced the communist threat. But it's an outstanding bogeyman, as far as politically created and maintained threats go, because it may no longer be debated in polite or sophisticated circles.

Why? Because on the day Gore received that absurd Nobel prize, he declared that the topic in question was not political, but rather MORAL and SPIRITUAL.
Who wants to take the immoral position in a discussion at the next Christmas party? Or better yet, who wants to argue the pros of slavery, Nazi Germany, or animal cruelty during lunch next week?

Saletan buys this moral characterization wholesale, saying that Gingrich is addressing "the threat that transcends all others."
Straight out of Dr. Strangelove, really. But politically invincible, it may turn out.

I'm sympathetic to your complaint, but if one does believe that global climate change is real and is happening at the rate that it is occurring, and believes that the dire consequences Gore describes will occur, then indeed, it IS a paramount issue with profoundly moral and spiritual aspects.

If you don't believe all of this is true, then that's another debate.

What I object to is the idea that once you sign onto the idea that climate change is real, then you must automatically sign on to such boondoggles as Kyoto, decide that capitalism and wealth creation is evil, mindlessly agree to give government control over new technology and many different aspects of individuals' lives, demand huge tax increases to build new federal government bureaucracies to "manage" the crisis, and giving free HBO for the poor.

It reminds me of the time I attended a protest against the war on drugs, believing that it is un-American, stupid and wrong. Next to me I had idiots in Che Guevara shirts, people handing out communist flyers, PETA fanatics and other dolts with leftist utopian goals and tyrannical, impractical strategies.

As Newt suggests, we can make a lot better headway against global climate change by enlisting the forces of the free market by incentivizing it and by creating standards and goals for it to meet, rather than punishing free enterprise and crushing the dynamism of the American economy.

If for instance we follow like sheep and sign Kyoto, we will look up and say, "What happened to my job? What happened to my paycheck? And why are the ice caps still melting?" Well, it will be because Kyoto crushes enterprise and still allows China and India to be the worst polluters in the world. But hey, we'll feel real smug about ourselves.

Let's free up the conversation about how to get there, and be biased toward the creativity that the free market can bring.

A Nobel prize is not absurd! Do you have one?

1.) Capitalist wealth creation is not evil. It's a myth.

2.) You say "government" whenever you should say "public sector." It's easy to be angry at bureacrats, even though most of America's buraucrats work for private corporations like banks, insurance companies, the entire financial industry and so on. Suddenly, though, they're good bureacrats because they're creating wealth, right?

3.) You don't like the company you're in at an anti-drug-war demo. They're all dolts, not smart guys like you. The PETA members are "fanatics" and are somehow representative of the people there, except for you. So how do you like the company you have in the new Republlican party? Not, perhaps?

Mainstream Americans always hate the company of people who take politics and/or culture seriously. Such people are "idiots" or "fanatics."

4.) Your touching faith in "free enterprise" flies in the face of hundreds of years of contradictory evidence. Al Gore is right -- it's all religion, since for so many, like you, the Hidden Hand of the "self-regulating" market is very much like God: invisible, mysterious, omnipotent, and nonexistent. The political system you actually favor is Corporate Syndicalism, which Herbert Hoover favored way back then. That is the direction in which the "dynamism of the American economy" trends, absent regulation.

"1.) Capitalist wealth creation is not evil. It's a myth."

Thank you.

" 2.) You say "government" whenever you should say "public sector.""

What's the difference? Really.

"It's easy to be angry at bureacrats, even though most of America's buraucrats work for private corporations like banks, insurance companies, the entire financial industry and so on. Suddenly, though, they're good bureacrats because they're creating wealth, right?"

Why in the world do I care if a private enterprise wants to run in a bureaucratic way? And at some point a small private enterprise which wants to become a big one will have to have some layers of bureaucracy, which is one of the challenges to growing one's business. If a private enterprise in competition with others runs ineffciently, is too slow to respond to market changes and consumers' needs and desires, it dies.

But we don't get those choices when it comes to government. Big government bureaucracies just keep doing poor jobs. There is no competition which weeds out poor performing government services. You've heard about government waste, right?

I understand there are all sorts of humans which can not be met by the private for-profit model, and for many of these we need to collectivize, mandatorily, under law, in the form of taxation and government services.

I dislike, however, things that can be taken care of by the private, for-profit model in a much more efficient and responsive way, one which provides more and better choices to individuals, being taken over by, or being given to the government so that you and I must forcibly hand over our money for them to do a poor and inefficient job.

"3.) You don't like the company you're in at an anti-drug-war demo."

Not the ones I mentioned, no.

"They're all dolts, not smart guys like you. The PETA members are "fanatics" and are somehow representative of the people there, except for you."

Basically. I don't know if the Che Guevara praisers, the communist holocaust deniers and animal rights fanatics represented all of the people there. But somehow a protest against laws that put people in jail who had done nothing but use a drug in their own body, was included in a general hard left-wing protest against "the System, man!" The irony of those advocating for both Marxism and against government interference with drug users, was hysterical and totally missed by these people.

"So how do you like the company you have in the new Republlican party?"

Not much right now. They've lost their way and have a long time to recover. I'm basically a Libertarian voter now and for the foreseeable future.

"Mainstream Americans always hate the company of people who take politics and/or culture seriously. Such people are "idiots" or "fanatics.""

I don't hate anybody, and I certainly didn't hate those people at the protest. I do, however, tend to find people who are soaking in politics, who filter everything in life through the prism of politics, to be quite boring, humorless and narrow individuals. There is a lot more to life than politics, thank God.

"4.) Your touching faith in "free enterprise" flies in the face of hundreds of years of contradictory evidence."

What evidence? Human beings lived better, more dignified and free lives under queens, kings and serfdom? Are you kidding? Do share.

And then you go on to paint me as some nuts who believes we need to destroy all government and community and replace it with megacorporations. Oh brother.

Do you understand at least what you are advocating? That we should be done with the American experiment altogether? What do you have against freedom?

It amazes me how furious people get when one simply advocates for as much freedom as can be allowed. That's all I'm saying. Let free individuals work out their problems as they see fit to the greatest extent possible (meaning, we can't have total, absolute individualism, or we'll have anarchy and attendant human misery). What's so horrible about that concept? I thought that was what America was built on.

I think this thread had to do with global climate change.

I still advocate that government should work with individual citizens to come up with solutions as much as possible. I think we will get to those solutions quicker and better than only punishing free enterprise. Government must set standards and regulations regarding, say, mileage and emissions on vehicles and factories and demand free individuals meet them. But then, let's also use tax incentives for new, cleaner technology.

"1.) Capitalist wealth creation is not evil. It's a myth."

Thank you.

" 2.) You say "government" whenever you should say "public sector.""

What's the difference? Really.

"It's easy to be angry at bureacrats, even though most of America's buraucrats work for private corporations like banks, insurance companies, the entire financial industry and so on. Suddenly, though, they're good bureacrats because they're creating wealth, right?"

Why in the world do I care if a private enterprise wants to run in a bureaucratic way? And at some point a small private enterprise which wants to become a big one will have to have some layers of bureaucracy, which is one of the challenges to growing one's business. If a private enterprise in competition with others runs ineffciently, is too slow to respond to market changes and consumers' needs and desires, it dies.

But we don't get those choices when it comes to government. Big government bureaucracies just keep doing poor jobs. There is no competition which weeds out poor performing government services. You've heard about government waste, right?

I understand there are all sorts of humans which can not be met by the private for-profit model, and for many of these we need to collectivize, mandatorily, under law, in the form of taxation and government services.

I dislike, however, things that can be taken care of by the private, for-profit model in a much more efficient and responsive way, one which provides more and better choices to individuals, being taken over by, or being given to the government so that you and I must forcibly hand over our money for them to do a poor and inefficient job.

"3.) You don't like the company you're in at an anti-drug-war demo."

Not the ones I mentioned, no.

"They're all dolts, not smart guys like you. The PETA members are "fanatics" and are somehow representative of the people there, except for you."

Basically. I don't know if the Che Guevara praisers, the communist holocaust deniers and animal rights fanatics represented all of the people there. But somehow a protest against laws that put people in jail who had done nothing but use a drug in their own body, was included in a general hard left-wing protest against "the System, man!" The irony of those advocating for both Marxism and against government interference with drug users, was hysterical and totally missed by these people.

"So how do you like the company you have in the new Republlican party?"

Not much right now. They've lost their way and have a long time to recover. I'm basically a Libertarian voter now and for the foreseeable future.

"Mainstream Americans always hate the company of people who take politics and/or culture seriously. Such people are "idiots" or "fanatics.""

I don't hate anybody, and I certainly didn't hate those people at the protest. I do, however, tend to find people who are soaking in politics, who filter everything in life through the prism of politics, to be quite boring, humorless and narrow individuals. There is a lot more to life than politics, thank God.

"4.) Your touching faith in "free enterprise" flies in the face of hundreds of years of contradictory evidence."

What evidence? Human beings lived better, more dignified and free lives under queens, kings and serfdom? Are you kidding? Do share.

And then you go on to paint me as some nuts who believes we need to destroy all government and community and replace it with megacorporations. Oh brother.

Do you understand at least what you are advocating? That we should be done with the American experiment altogether? What do you have against freedom?

It amazes me how furious people get when one simply advocates for as much freedom as can be allowed. That's all I'm saying. Let free individuals work out their problems as they see fit to the greatest extent possible (meaning, we can't have total, absolute individualism, or we'll have anarchy and attendant human misery). What's so horrible about that concept? I thought that was what America was built on.

I think this thread had to do with global climate change.

I still advocate that government should work with individual citizens to come up with solutions as much as possible. I think we will get to those solutions quicker and better than only punishing free enterprise. Government must set standards and regulations regarding, say, mileage and emissions on vehicles and factories and demand free individuals meet them. But then, let's also use tax incentives for new, cleaner technology.

Sheesh. I meant to write, "I understand there are all sorts of human needs which can not be met by the private for-profit model..."

If you need medical care, or need insurance to protect you from the crushing expense of that need, you will have to deal with bureaucrats, there's no getting away from that. Andplease, don't prose at me about little businesses needing to develop layers of admin in order to compete -- what next, Adam Smith's pin factory?

Competition is not the only engine of progress and guarantee of quality. Youlibertarians make such a fuss about it, like you've just discovered some profound truth about humanity. You find communists tedious; do you have any idea how boring I find you twitty little Ayn Rand obsessives?

This is a big country with a huge consumer and industrial economy. How will we keep meat packers from oversalting hams with incentives? How will we make sure employers follow workplace safety standards? Do you think a free labor market will somehow enforce safety when you've done away with that OSHA bureaucracy? How?

Go back to your bong, you silly boy.

Melvyl,

There is nothing in my post which attacks your intentions and decency. I even called you "decent" in my post. I assume you want more and more nannying, oppressive government to keep you from the realities of life because you believe it's the best way, and don't really think towards the end results, which is that you'll look up and find yourself in a form of tyranny.

What ever happened to "Absolute power corrupts absolutely?" I guess left-wing tyrants like you always tack on, "Until the really nice, good guys get in."

That ideas which challenge yours get you so angry is the problem. That you have no ability sit in the lap of luxury and security, brought to you by free markets, shows a disgusting lack of gratitude for all the good you have in your life.

Go back to your communist holocaust denying, and dreams of tyranny, you frightened, mean little man.

No, you know what? I let you off to easy. I'll do this again:

"If you need medical care, or need insurance to protect you from the crushing expense of that need, you will have to deal with bureaucrats..."

Indeed. I mentioned that it's a fact of large organizations that they require layers of bureauracy. You seem to be delighted with it, whereas I see it as a necessary evil.

", there's no getting away from that. And please, don't prose at me about little businesses needing to develop layers of admin in order to compete -- what next, Adam Smith's pin factory?"

I was simply agreeing with you that bureaucracy must always exist as some point. And you still get angry at me?

"Competition is not the only engine of progress and guarantee of quality."

No, but it's probably the best one.

I challenged you to show me all of this evidence you have that unfree markets, back in the "hundreds of years" before we had what we consider modern, free market democracy, created better goods, services, quality of life and human dignity. I'll repeat: you want to go BACK TO the days of oligarchies, centralized land ownership, centralized, top-down everything, where the people had zero rights, zero power, and starved at the whims of the few powerful runners/owners of the government. I want the exact opposite of that, and you attack me as a bad person. Wow.

Still waiting for your "evidence."

"You libertarians...'

You write that like it's an insult. There was this little thing which overthrew you fantasies of yesteryear, called the Englightenment, which had a lot to do with the building of the American Founding Fathers' mindset, who were really the template for libertarians. I'm proud of that label. You hate liberty, and love communism. Go on:

"...make such a fuss about it, like you've just discovered some profound truth about humanity."

It's apparently news to you.

"You find communists tedious; do you have any idea how boring I find you twitty little Ayn Rand obsessives?"

Who care how you find anything? But thanks for making my point about people who soak in politics. What did I say, "boring, narrow, humorless." Yeah, you pretty much fit the bill.

"This is a big country with a huge consumer and industrial economy."

Yes, something you are against.

"How will we keep meat packers from oversalting hams with incentives?"

We already do: it's called consumer demand. It's why I can go to any market and find low salt ham. And those who choose to eat salted ham get to buy it that way too. See, it's called free individuals making free choices, even ones you don't agree with. That's liberty. In your world, the Politburo on Health Matters, would deny consumers their choice to eat salted ham. In your world a few really smart, well-intentioned people get the power over everyone else. You are a tyrant, demanding more tyranny.

"How will we make sure employers follow workplace safety standards?

We already do. We have labor laws and companies get fined and have their finances seriously damaged if they don't comply. It's the way it should be. I believe in workers' rights. I think government has the job of protecting people.

"Do you think a free labor market will somehow enforce safety when you've done away with that OSHA bureaucracy?"

As I stated before, I don't want anarchy. I am just not a child who wants government to tuck me in bed at night.

"Go back to your bong, you silly boy."

I prefer joints, thanks, you humorless, scolding, overserious little prude.

EarlyBird:

Melvyl,

Go back to your communist holocaust denying, and dreams of tyranny, you frightened, mean little man.

Please take that back, and refrain from doing likewise ever again. The conversation between you two had already turned to name-calling, but that one crossed the line of decency.

Before you respond, keep in mind that he never once defended Holocaust deniers, or ever gave the slightest inkling that he was one. He defended the people you mentioned before you ever said any of them had denied the Holocaust, and I have seen nothing that would lead me to believe he would defend them as well.

Name-calling is one thing, but this is an entirely different category of insult. Melvyl can well take care of himself, which I expect him to do shortly. Nonetheless, I cannot silently abide such garbage as false or unfounded accusations of Holocaust denial when I see it.

I seem to have struck a nerve. Why should i be angry at you? I'm not. You're a bore, and something of a hysteric, but there's nothing there that calls for anger.

Your free-market fetish is silly and trivial. Those same markets that put you, baby cakes, in the lap of luxury, doom others to lives of shocking privation. That doesn't make them bad any more than a pig is bad when it eats its children, but it doesn't make them good, either.

Go away and have an original thought. Learn more about actual history, and what life was like for most folks during the Enlightenment, when children were routinely executed for minor crimes against property.

About hams and salt limits: the free market does nothing to limit the amount of sodium in a ham. The FDA sets limits on that, because with more salt you can get a ham to hold more water, so it's more profitable, but the product becomes a threat to public health. Since you're a big drug fiend, you'll be happy to know that oversalting hams will get you more time in the pokey than a simple possession with intent to sell bust, if it's your first. And that is what keeps meat packers on the straight and narrow, not your hidden hand. Grow up.

The benefits of free markets are limited in this country vastly more by monopoly capitalism and current abuses of the patent and copyright system than by any bureacracy, public or private. The Straussians, who were the smarter version of what you are, recognized that no community larger than the Greek Polis can actually put the principles of libertarianism into practice. Those markets you fetishize are the very reason why the liberty you claim to worship is a pipe dream.

You're a libratarian. Soon you will grow up and become a republican, most likely. That would involve the least change in your opinions and rhetoric, so it's most likely. Think of it as a rational choice. Then, you'll be able to look back on your rebellious, stoner libertarian youth and think what a rebel you were back then, so young, so pure of heart.

Thanks Ghandi, but you need a history lesson apparently. You'll notice that I did not say he denied the Holocaust, which is typically capitalized to refer to the committed against the Jews by the Nazis.

Melvyl calls himself a communist. I said he was a communist holocaust denier.

The wretched, brutal, stupid, horrific communist experiment cost about 20 - 50 million lives, depending upon which historian you refer to. It was the result of a brutal government which committed mass murders against its citizens, enslaved its citizens, starved its citizens, and disallowed its most basic needs to be met. It was one of the most grotesque systems ever devised, all in the service to some utopia where "everyone would be equal." Just read a history of Mao's China and your toes will curl. Then go on to read about good ol' Uncle Joe's Soviet Union.

Oh. But I keep forgetting: the communists started out with good intentions, so that one doesn't matter.

Melvyl attacked me because I believe in people having as much freedom as can be allowed. He's a bonehead. Don't help him.

You're sitting there, overweight, in a comfortable chair, typing away on a computer you bought at a store, probably in a really comfortable neighborhood, whose biggest worry is the price of gasoline, with a roof over your head and not too much to worry about - all because of free market capitalism.

And you don't want others in the world to have what you do. Why? Cuz it's not perfect and not everyone has the same things! Golly, how old are you?

You idiot, get educated, preferably in a private school. The Third World is crying out for more free markets, protections of private property, and the personal freedoms which are integral to free markets, all the things which make capitalism work. They have suffered generation after generation under the bullshit, centralized government economies you're espousing, you dimwitted, selfish, smug little dork. You are the enemy of the poor.

You actually have the guts to call yourself a communist. What an asshole. I thought you and neo-Nazis didn't own up to that stuff still in public.

EarlyBird:

Thanks Ghandi, but you need a history lesson apparently. You'll notice that I did not say he denied the Holocaust, which is typically capitalized to refer to the committed against the Jews by the Nazis.

The whole of my misunderstanding comes down to this: When you used the phrase "communist holocaust denying" to describe Melvyl, I took you to mean "communist (holocaust denying)" rather than "(communist holocaust) denying." That you didn't capitalize it wouldn't even be odd around here given that so many don't seem to be aware of the "Shift" key. (I know you are aware of it, so hold on a minute.)

EarlyBird:

Melvyl calls himself a communist. I said he was a communist holocaust denier.

To my knowledge, he never explicitly called himself a communist. However, you seem to have inferred it from this sentence:

Melvyl: "You find communists tedious; do you have any idea how boring I find you twitty little Ayn Rand obsessives?"

He is welcome to say he is, or not, although I suppose you are welcome to keep saying he is. That's not what I object to; you say he denies the communist holocaust. Has he said as much in some other thread? Nothing I read in this one gives me that impression.

EarlyBird:

The wretched, brutal, stupid, horrific communist experiment cost about 20 - 50 million lives, depending upon which historian you refer to. It was the result of a brutal government which committed mass murders against its citizens, enslaved its citizens, starved its citizens, and disallowed its most basic needs to be met. It was one of the most grotesque systems ever devised, all in the service to some utopia where "everyone would be equal." Just read a history of Mao's China and your toes will curl. Then go on to read about good ol' Uncle Joe's Soviet Union.

All of this is true.

EarlyBird:

Oh. But I keep forgetting: the communists started out with good intentions, so that one doesn't matter.

Melvyl attacked me because I believe in people having as much freedom as can be allowed. He's a bonehead. Don't help him.

I certainly wouldn't agree with the first statement, and I doubt Melvyl would either. But like I said before, he's a big boy and he can come back to agree or disagree with any of this.

Without reading the whole damn thread again, it does seem as though Melvyl did call the first name. It matters more to me who called the worst name. I'm "helping" him only to the extent that I would rather not see the most awful of insults bandied about so carelessly. Even on the internet, even here in the Fray, where words like "c***" and "f***" are not uncommon, there exist baser charges to be made.