Personal freedom-Part II: Personal freedom is a tricky thing; it shouldn’t be, but it is. I think that the primary reason for this is the fact that many individuals want to do what they want to do but they are dubious about what the other fellow wants to do. I wish it weren’t that way but nobody asked me.
Where things really get tricky is when self-righteous people decide that a man shouldn’t do something “for the good of the planet.” Or, that old standby, “for the common good.” Once in a while those people are right. Of course, when they are right, most others agree with them. For example, most would agree that it’s probably not a real good idea for everyone to have a nuclear device handy to get to. But, mostly, those people are wrong: They have different ideas than the other guy and they insist on having their way.
Al Gore
The best way to explain stuff like this is to use extreme examples, so let’s talk about me and Al Gore. Al Gore, if he were to have his way, would stop me from cooking a few steaks (or whatever) on my charcoal grill because he would say that I’m destroying the planet. My answer to that is, “Bunk!” Who in the dickens am I hurting by having a few cook-outs? I have been grilling for more than fifty years and (if I live) I intend to grill for a few more years. The truth is, with respect to my “carbon emissions” from grilling, my life-long emissions on everything don’t add up to what Gore emits when he warms up his personal jet. Of course, Gore would come back with something like, “But there are only a few of us and hundreds of millions of you.” No two ways about it, that is the truth. The problem with that logic, though, is that it makes some people more equal than others (George Orwell, Animal Farm).
You know, it started out as “global cooling.” Wrong. Then it morphed into “global warming.” Wrong. Now, it is “climate change.” I guess they figure that they can’t be wrong about that one. The problem is they want to place blame, a la Obama. Don’t these, whatever you want to call them, understand that the Earth has been undergoing cyclical geophysical changes for millennia? My God, there was a “mini ice age” somewhere around 300 years ago.
Oh, yes, lest I forget. I believe that Good Old Al warned us that, by 2016, both American coasts would be inundated due to melting ice. Sorry, Al.
The list goes on (and on and on).
