Environmentalism Not About the Earth But About Control, Part 1
For decades, American motorists have been subjected to propaganda insisting that they either need to drive less or give up safe, comfortable automobiles in favor of what amount to motorized coffins in order to preserve natural resources and environmental quality. Now that this policy goal is pretty much on the road to being implemented, the elites running our lives are not content to sit back in the glow of their accomplishment but are rather laying the groundwork for the next phase in their grand dream of limiting the free movement of the American people.
One would think the increasing popularity of electric and hybrid automobiles would please transportation planners and social engineers. However, as most realize somewhere along life's journey, getting what you want is not always what you expected.
For while hybrid cars might cut back on emissions and fuel consumption, they also take a bite out of gas tax revenues. But instead of tightening their belts and learning to make due with less as they counsel you when you complain about rising fuel costs, government planners are now conniving to pass the hardship on to you by altering the way transportation taxes are assessed.
Currently, such taxes are gathered in about the fairest way possible (a concept seldom associated with taxes) by collecting it in an innocuously private manner from those cautious enough to pay in cash at the bump based upon how many gallons acquired. However, from a plan being considered in Oregon, motorized Americans will have to contend with another governmental intrusion into their lives of Orwellian proportions.
Instead of collecting taxes on each gallon purchased, revenuers plan to install censors at gas stations capable of reading the global positioning systems to be installed in nearly all vehicles and, from that, tabulating how far a vehicle has been driven or into what zones they have motored. Proponents of the program claim citizens have nothing to fear from Big Brother since the system would only tabulate mileage rather than specific itinerary.
However, one does not have to be a Ray Bradbury to realize what a dystopian road this is headed down. For even if the sensors do not log precise destination, they are still capable of relaying to authorities --- even if they are “just” tax authorities, who can actually make your life more miserable than actual police as these activist accountants assume greater control over areas of your life once considered beyond the purview of just and legitimate government such as religious doctrines and where you have been.
Even more disturbing, these tracking devices are being designed to catalogue at what time of day you drive. That way the state will be able to charge you an additional fee for daring to drive at the times of day our government slavemasters would prefer we stay off the road.
While they are at it, why don’t they go ahead and add similar devices to our toilets as well to punish those that have more bowel movements than our betters in government think we ought since such functions contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gases and are often a sign that the chronically flatulent might be eating too high up the food chain. Those embracing their place as good little minions of the New World Order will probably respond, “But this discouragement of motorized travel is legitimate since one is using roads provided by the COMMUNITY and by definition the COMMUNITY determines what it considers the terms of use”.
Those thinking that they will be left alone if they use public transportation and sit quietly in their homes are in for a rude awakening that will probably arrive when they are dragged kicking and screaming to the relocation camp in part for the sake of the environment. For the totalist state is not content simply to tell you how to live once you step out into the broader COMMUNITY. It also wants to tell you in what kind of structure in which you may live out the existence its institutions have been beneficent enough to grant you as well as in many instances what manner of things you may do once you close the door.
Across the pond in Merry Ole England, according to a CNSNEWS.com story titled “UK May Tax Environmentally Unfriendly Houses”, beatnik rabble in the Green Party there have been at the forefront of efforts to introduce taxes on what their ilk have labeled “environmentally damaging behavior”. However, such penalties are for more than spitting on the sidewalk or tossing litter from the car window. Foremost among these fees include increased property taxes levied against homes not deemed green enough as well as on automobiles and on those daring to travel by air.
It must be remembered that the power to tax is the power to destroy. One member of the Conservative Party observed such taxes would disproportionately impact the poor and the elderly since these demographics are more likely to reside in domiciles not meeting energy efficiency expectations.
What better way to seize the property of the population’s undesirables (namely members of the lower middle class) than to tax them out of their homes and to herd them into governmentally approved relocation compounds such as those into which Hurricane Katrina victims were shunted. Here, these people were deprived of their constitutional rights to such an extent that they were forbidden from speaking with reporters. One gets around the raw nerve of eminent domain altogether if taxes are raised so high that residents are either forced to sell to developers or have their property seized by default.
Speaking from Tokyo as the elites will continue their lives of global travel while the common person will be corralled and branded like cattle going to slaughter, one British legislator (quite a ways from his homeland I might point out to the geographically illiterate) said, “Sometimes the changes will be painful. But leadership means facing the great challenges, even if the decisions are difficult.”
Shame the Eurocrats can’t display the same degree of courage to stand against the tide of radical Islam sweeping across what was the cradle of Western Civilization. I guess they have no qualms about turning Granny out into the streets since she isn’t likely to strap on a carbomb.
Don’t be fooled. Those such as the politician above making these kinds of statements won’t make a single personal change. Do you honestly believe the likes of Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth over there and the Bushes, Gores, and Kennedys over here are going to give up their multi-mansion estates to live in some I-Pod shipping-container sized apartment the rest of us will be expected to live in with a stupid grin slapped across our faces for the sake of the revolution?
Not only do the elites plan to snatch your homes from you in the name of conservation, they also want to regulate within your own living space --- or rather the one they plan to assign to you once they have succeeded in placing title to all property in the hands of the state or whatever institutional arrangement through which they plan to administer relinquished holdings.
Speaking before worshipful UN functionaries, Al Gore (whose ballooning waistline and burgeoning facial jowls indict him for consuming a greater percentage of the earth’s resources then what he would permit the working slob) claimed according to a 9/6/06 Drudge Report that “cigarettes are a significant contributor to global warming.” The same could be said about the former Vice President’s ever-fattening lip. Drudge ends this dispatch by noting that Gore closed his homily harping on his political future and by hawking a book he had written (no doubt printed on paper that could have contributed more to the cause of Mother Earth if it had remained a tree).
Interestingly, Al Gore is not the only eco-pimp using the environment to turn a trick or two. One would think the purpose of an environmental festival would be to discuss the environment. However from the program (printed on the remains of a slaughtered tree) for Green Festival 06 in Washington DC, it seems that the natural world was pretty much tagged on as an afterthought as the focus seemed to be radical politics with ageing hippies continuing to spread their filth and debauchery.
For example, from the schedule of speakers, one wouldn't be surprised to see Karl Marx to show up on the dais. Former Mr. Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden (who's nearly as old as Marx), was scheduled to speak on the topic of "Alternatives To War & Empire". Activist Medea Benjamin was docketed for the oration titled "We Have The Power To Stop The War In Iraq". Another scheduled homily was titled "The Power Of Storytelling: Changing The World".
What in the name of Sheol does any of this have to do with enjoying nature or marveling at furry woodland creatures? Nothing whatsoever, ladies and gentleman.
Before all is said and done, those that address such covens will no doubt make those in attendance feel guilty for simply being alive (especially if you happen to be White) and for enjoying the blessings that come from living in the greatest country on earth. And if it wasn't, why are all these immigrants self loathing liberals want to grant unrestricted access to our bounty keep trying to break in, and perhaps even more importantly, end up forcing you to partake in their life of squalor.
Foremost on the agenda was the confiscation of your own individual domicile and privacy. One seminar was titled "Community Without Walls".
But as one wise soul observed (it might have been Chesterton), don't take down a fence unless you know why it had been put up. Walls and fences, contrary to leftist opinion, are very positive things as they confirm identity as an individual by demarcating what is mine and what is not mine (namely yours).
It is the purpose of such a lecture to erode the concept of individuality and private property by manipulating those in attendance to be an "active participant in one's neighborhood." That may sound all warm and fuzzy, but in a "community without walls" where those living have forgotten legitimate boundaries and limitations, it usually ends up being invoked as an excuse to get involved in the business of others that is no one else's concern and as an excuse to bring sanctions occasionally bordering on the violent against those not opening every detail of their lives to the scrutinizing oversight of the COMMUNITY.
Some might conclude that, even if these plans were true, they are so far down the road that we will not have to worry about it during our lifetimes. And even though I cannot give an exact date as to when these communalistic horrors will transpire when what you slave away for will no longer be yours to enjoy as you wish, but as sure as I draw breath and write this, I can assure you the plans are being set into motion to revolutionize the American way of life.
In the future, it won’t be enough to let these flakes cordon themselves off in their own compounds where whacky ideas, loose morals, masculine women, and effeminate men will be the order of the day. As I’ve said before, it is their intention to drag the rest of us down into Third World squalor.
One of the exhibitors at the Green Festival was the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. The description for this organization reads as follows in the 2006 promotional brochure: “The Federation of Egalitarian Communities is a network of communal groups spread across North America, from small agricultural homesteads to village-like communities to urban group homes.”
It has been a few years since the 1960’s, so perhaps a few readers (a significant percentage of whom like myself didn’t even trod the earth at that time) need to be reminded what exactly a commune is. A commune is a living arrangement where the residents do not own their respective domiciles outright but rather in common with the group (or rather those designated as the representatives of the group) making decisions on behalf of the members.
While it may sound all warm and fuzzy, seldom do such living arrangements end happily. At best, most participants part ways with hurt feelings and at worst they often end in bloodshed as typified by the Jonestown and Heavensgate tragedies or when the principles are applied society-wide as was the case in the Soviet Union and Red China.
Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.
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