Annals Of The Bends

"Quite frankly, I don’t believe the activists who have succeeded in getting the polar bear listed under the ESA really believe that the polar bear is threatened. This was just one more tool that will enable a gaggle of lawyers to go after the real object of the environmentalists’ disdain: Big Oil.

And with three presidential candidates who all agree with the environmental activists, the coming months and years are looking pretty bleak for freedom, capitalism, and prosperity. Meanwhile, the polar bears will do just fine, just as they have during previous warm periods in history.

I only hope when global warming ends, and is accepted to be a largely natural phenomenon rather than manmade, that all of the regulatory mistakes we’ve made can somehow be undone."

That's Dr. Roy W. Spencer at National Review Online, commenting on yesterday's government assault on people in the name of polar bears. His first point is obvious to me, and I think he's playing it small. Some of those idiots might actually believe this huggy horseshit about the polar bears. Even so, however, they're nonetheless hateful of human beings or -- at least -- might as well be for all of how they're ready to use force to stand in the way of production: you know; the work that keeps us alive and thriving instead of cold and starving.

The long-range implications of this are incalculable in detail, but easy enough to see in the broad stroke. It almost feels like a warning, now that fuel prices are wreaking market-wide havoc and there is some small clamoring for more production. "Don't even think about it." Whether that's really in the kabuki nature of the thing or not, there can be no doubt that the uphill toward civilized American life just got a lot steeper. This is a long-run deal, ladies and gentlemen. Spencer's "only hope" is set far down the road, if ever. That's your life I'm talking about, if not your kids', too.

Take a good long look at your kids.

Tell me they're not worth more than a polar bear.

That's the fight that will now take place in all kinds of courts for years on end every time someone wants to deliver unto your dainty hands a single new gallon of fuel.

And that's just the start of it. For years now, it's occurred to me that America would bring its characteristic (almost an instinct for) innovation to tyranny. This government would write new chapters in its annals, sprung from a uniquely American ambition and sincerity but bent so far around historic corners that all sight of home was lost. And so it would sink below its nature to something old and sick, but uniquely descended.

Before this boiling polar bear deal is through, it'll be a chapter all by itself.