Researchers refer to such collective fears as mass hysteria. They consider it a psychogenic illness, “a condition that begins in the mind rather than the body.” It exposes itself when a group of people starts feeling anxious, sick, or crazed at the same time, notwithstanding the absence of any physical reason for their condition.

A recent The Lancet study of 10,000 young people, ages 16 – 25, found that 59% were extremely worried about climate change; 84% were at least moderately worried. The respondents suffered from sadness, anxiety, and anger and felt powerless, helpless, and guilty. The authors conclude that climate anxiety is so great these young people believe humanity is doomed, all they value is being destroyed, and they are hesitant to have children. Illustrating the impact of climate hysteria is the belief by the young people that government could protect them if it would listen to their feelings, validate and respect them, and implement their views, i.e., do what they demand.

Episodes of mass hysteria have been recorded since the Middle Ages. There have been Witch trials, dancing plagues in which the participants could not stop dancing until they were so tired they died, and screaming trances. In modern political times, there was the Red Scare hysteria over the perceived threat of communism. Before the Covid pandemic, there was the Y2K hysteria over the belief that when clocks struck midnight on January 1, 2000, all computer systems would fail to recognize the year, and society would collapse due to massive electrical outages.

Influencing today’s climate collective is a federal government and media that pound into the heads of these young people that society’s use of fossil fuels causes every problem in the world. If an area of the world is too hot or cold, it’s climate change. Forest fires, storms, floods, and draughts are due to climate change. The oceans are getting warmer, species are dying, and humanity faces more health risks due to climate change. Climate change even causes poverty. The fact that the earth is much cleaner today than a century ago is irrelevant to those possessed by climate hysteria.

Pulling together these desperate report findings is a recent National Institutes of Health study on “Covid-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria. While the study focused on how the political system and social media negatively impacted the public mind during the Covid pandemic, its findings apply to situations in which large segments of a population believe, without any injury, they are continuously exposed to dangerous conditions.

The authors of the NIH study describe mass hysteria as “a large group of people get[ting] collectively very upset” by negative information. “This threat [negative information] evokes fear and spreads in society. Symptoms can also spread.” This spread of emotions and anxiety through impacted groups is called “contagion,”

Once an infected group is in a state of mass hysteria, the government can “impose measures on the rest of the population, inflicting almost unrestricted harm,” including abrogating civil liberties. The authors describe how the federal government used lockdowns and distancing to decrease psychological resistance and create greater hysteria. The government’s actions, combined with news agencies and social media, promoted massive negative news campaigns that deteriorated psychic health by intentionally scaring those in the already anxious population.

The authors conclude that the combination of a big government that eliminates information that competes with its desired narrative and the negative information spread by social media make society more prone to the development of mass hysteria.

The Biden administration uses climate change to create the anxiety that causes mass hysteria. President Biden regularly informs the public that “Climate change is the existential threat to humanity…Unchecked, it is going to actually bake this planet. This is not hyperbole. It’s real.”

Biden emphasizes a “Whole-of-government-approach” to climate change is mandatory since it touches every aspect of society and all things made by society.

By implementing a whole of government approach, Biden makes climate change the top federal priority. Policy changes are made in every aspect of governing to address climate change, including new taxes, zero-emission cars, regulating hundreds of appliances, the electrical grid, power plants, mining, oil production, manufacturing generally, and international relations. Biden’s message to these young people is that climate change is so harmful every aspect of society must be regulated to save the planet. Unfortunately, the Lancet study finds the anxiety is so deep the government’s whole-of-government response is insufficient.

The media follows its climate change narrative as a means of ingratiating itself with the government. By November 2021, U.S. news coverage of climate change reached an all-time high. Key to the coverage increase was a change in describing it from global warming to “more intense words and phrases to describe the phenomenon, such as “climate catastrophe” and “climate emergency.” These new terms were then incorporated into the tacking algorithms to increase term coverage by 50%. As an expert noted, “Our [that] language helps describe the realities of our [the climate collectivists] world.”

Within two years, the Biden administration created a deep-rooted mass hysteria about climate change among young adults. The anxiety is so great there is nothing the government can do short of shutting down society to ease their pain. Biden’s quest for power and its media partners in deception has created a widespread mental health crisis within the population segment that will soon be some of the leaders in the United States. Intentionally creating hysteria in a nation is not responsible governing or reporting.

William L. Kovacs has served as senior vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, chief counsel to a congressional committee, and a partner in law D.C. law firms. His book Reform the Kakistocracy is the winner of the 2021 Independent Press Award for Political/Social Change. He can be contacted at wlk@ReformTheKakistocracy.com

The post The Climate Change Frenzy Is a Mass Hysteria Movement appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

But if you’re looking for something on libertarian history by a non-libertarian who tries to be fair, but is also relatively critical and who comes from outside of the libertarian echo chamber—it may be worth your time.

The author of this new book, wrote an article this week for The Hill entitled, “The Libertarian Party is Collapsing. Here’s Why.” The short answer he gives, near as I can tell, is “racism”.

In it, he credits Gary Johnson’s 2016 run as the Libertarian Party’s “greatest triumph”, so one would assume that he is referring to a collapse post-Johnson. Although he resists naming names rather than defining crowds, there are only so many new developments to point to during that time. He relies heavily on reporting from places like The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Nation for the generalizations—both of which have been highly critical of the Mises Caucus wing of the party specifically, which is mentioned in the article.

His attacks on libertarianism run from those that seem absurd at first glance (he sees big government response to COVID as a case for big government rather than for libertarianism), to those that are pedestrian (he claims government is necessary to address large challenges like climate change and healthcare), to more interesting fare (comparing arguments common of modern libertarians to great libertarian thinkers of the past).

There’s obviously plenty to disagree with from a libertarian point of view, but to a certain extent politics is just the art of disagreement, best played by engaging with competing ideas. The day his Hill article was published, I talked to him about all this, and let him make his case.

TLR: This is Gary Doan of The Libertarian Republic and I’m talking to Andrew Koppelman. He’s a professor of law and political science at the prestigious Northwestern University, who’s often focused on the intersection of those two disciplines. He hails from University of Chicago and Yale law school, was a fellow at Harvard and Princeton, and to be honest, he has too many educational bonafides to be wasting his time talking to The Libertarian Republic. I’m happy he is all the same. His new book is entitled “Burning Down The House: How The Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted By Delusion And Greed”. Andrew, thanks for talking with me.

AK: Thanks for having me.

TLR: You recently wrote an article in The Hill entitled, “The Libertarian Party Is Collapsing. Here’s Why”, which was critical of the most modern iteration of the Libertarian Party, especially the Mises Caucus wing, which recently took control during the Reno reset. It’s full of charges of racism, selfishness, and greed festering in that institution as well as implications of external manipulation by the alt-right. Seems to have upset the usual suspects. Before getting into the details, what’s a summary of the “why” that’s the general gist of it? And did you reach out to any of the members of the LNC or Mises Caucus leadership before publishing for comment, and if so what was their response to it?

AK: Just relied on publicly available sources that had been pretty thoroughly reported by others. I do political philosophy. I was trying to think about the very narrow question of what are racists doing in the Libertarian Party to begin with, because there’s something puzzling about this. Libertarianism is foundationally concerned with the liberty of everybody. Equality seems to be baked into libertarianism. And so there’s just something very weird about these folks being here at all. It’s like having vegetarians in a butcher shop.

And so you’ve got to have some explanation for what are they doing here. And that’s something that I thought that I could contribute something to, and something that I really hadn’t talked about at all in my book, because while my book is critical of libertarianism and talks about the most prominent libertarian thinkers, none of them are racists. There’s not a single major libertarian theorist, who, as part of their basic philosophy, appeals to racism in any way. And most of them explicitly and vehemently repudiate it. So it’s just puzzling. What are these people doing here?

And my explanation is that there is a certain emotional appeal, first of all, to opposing civil rights laws. Barry Goldwater was not a racist. But once he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that became an attraction of libertarian ideology for many people who were much less admirable than Goldwater himself. As a general matter, the fantasy of separating yourself out from a population you don’t like, is part of the appeal of this ideology. I am not saying that libertarianism itself is racist. I try to make very clear that that’s not what I’m saying. And I quote Ayn Rand’s repudiation of racism, but there’s something going on here that demands explanation.

TLR: Let me hold on to that racism thing for a little bit there. You’ve described the party as being quote, torn apart by an alt-right insurgency with racist tendencies and that was where you seem to first go to with this. I guess you could call it an extension to your book, hitting libertarianism from another end—or at least some modern libertarianism or a faction of it. When you say ‘alt-right insurgency with racist tendencies’, are you referring to the Mises Caucus specifically? Assuming you are, are you referring to the entire caucus, some of their ranks, or their leader–

AK: There are elements that are concentrated within the caucus. But once again, I have not done original reporting. I’m relying on secondary sources that are already out there and not- you know, reporters who are, I thought, quite reliable. But this is my claim. If you want to interrogate that claim, you need to go to the sources that I was relying on.

TLR: Some more reliable than the others. You know, some of it’s just like, Southern Poverty Law Center, stuff like that, but I’m sure there’s more reputable ones as well, because… I actually don’t disagree that there is a problem to be addressed that you’re alluding to, but–

AK: So the libertarians I’ve talked to- this seems to be common knowledge in the libertarian community. And the tendency has been there ever since the Ron Paul newsletters and some of the stuff that Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard wrote. So, I mean, this is our long-standing problem. It’s not something that I was not aware that there was any controversy about the fact that there were such elements.

TLR: Yeah, I mean, part of it, you alluded to with pointing to loaded words like “moocher” from Rand’s writing and so forth that can be taken… Obviously, Lew Rockwell and the Paul newsletters, you know, at most charitable are tone deaf to their whistles. I’m gonna return to the racism critique in just a second, here.

But when I think of the Libertarian Party’s greatest triumphs, I think of things like shifting the conversation in ways that led to ending the draft, lessening the extant prohibition through state-led legalization and decrim efforts, reminding conservatives of their anti-war history, and a respect at least in the rhetoric for free markets and making their promotion acceptable to the right, presenting progressives with concrete proposals in the realm of criminal justice reform, and leading the way early on ending modern forms of discriminatory practices, like bans on gay marriage, offering serious proposals on entitlement reform and foreign policy realism—all through shift in the narrative. They’ve contributed to all this despite remaining on the fringe, both in the direct electoral numbers since it’s pretty low, and while being handicapped by a decent amount of in-house crazies. But they’ve–

AK: All that seems to me to be fair. I’m not sure how much of it is the party and how much of it is a more general shift in the culture. But one of the things that I try to make clear about in my book is that libertarians were right about quite a lot of things. But there is- I have a lot of admiration for Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and Richard Epstein. And I think that even the more romantic varieties like Rothbard or Rand have some real attractions to what they have to offer. It really is the case that I don’t even need to go through examples because you just gave a lot of them.

The reason why I wrote the book is because there are books out there about libertarianism, which are sort of introductions, to the general reader. And they’re written by very smart people. David Boaz wrote a good book. Jason Brennan has a good book. But they’re not critical. They don’t try to sort out, alright, where did this come from? And what are the different forms? And how does it hold up as a political philosophy? Because that’s what libertarianism is—at its core, it is a political philosophy. It needs to be examined with the tools of political philosophy, which is what I have to offer. I’m a professor.

TLR: In your book. I mean, the title “Burning Down the House”. So you’ve described libertarianism as a philosophy that advocates of state power be absolutely minimized. When I’ve heard you talk about your book- I’m actually a huge fan of the history podcast that you were recently on, even though I know the hosts aren’t all that libertarian. But when I’ve heard you talk about your book, you began with a story about a partially privatized fire department, which looked on, let a house be burned down for non payment of fire insurance.

AK: And, right, the guy had, you know, he was getting old, he forgot to make his payment. The consequence was, the fire department came to his house and watched as it burned down. And the reason why it’s particularly interesting is that there was a debate in the public press about whether this was appropriate behavior on the part of the fire department. And it was happening in the middle of the debate about Obamacare. And so everybody understood that this was really a debate about Obamacare. The question was, should everybody be responsible for dealing for their own misfortunes? Or is it legitimate to have communal institutions to protect people? When unexpected bad things happen? Such as a fire?

TLR: Yeah. However, libertarian runs this spectrum, from anarchism to various degrees of minarchism. I know plenty of libertarians who are moderate (by libertarian standards, of course), including myself who aren’t calling to privatize the police or fire departments who aren’t all regular–

AK: Yeah, the question the book is trying to answer is how did we go from Hayek’s moderate attack on socialism, which was absolutely right, and I think really has carried the day. I don’t think there is anything in the Road to Serfdom that would be rejected by Joseph Biden, or Elizabeth Warren, or Bernie Sanders, or even Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. They all think that we want to have a free market economy. The question is how large a welfare state is appropriate. But none of them want to nationalize the means of production. And yet, the idea of letting a house burn down would have seemed really weird to Hayek.

And so another puzzle is, how did we get from there to what happened in Tennessee? And I think it’s because of the advent of more extreme ideas, such as the ideas of Murray Rothbard, which are increasingly influential. And so then we have to look at the ideas and ask well, so what do we think of Rothbardian ideas? Are they or are they not an improvement on Hayek? Because Rothbard understood that he had deep disagreements with Hayek, and that there was just a fundamentally different philosophy being offered.

TLR: You said that a libertarian focus on individual rights seems flatly inconsistent with racism. Do you believe that combating something as irrational and repugnant as racism is best achieved through a focus on individual rights or a focus on group rights and why?

AK: Well, I’m, myself, not much interested in group rights. Since group rights have not turned up in libertarian thought, which I focused on, except in something that was too esoteric to even get into in the column. There are people like Hans Hermann Hoppe who argued that we should look at national borders as a sort of property right. And illegal aliens as a kind of trespasser. There is a strange notion of property here that has some very odd entailments. So, Hoppe is the only libertarian I can think of that comes anywhere near to thinking about group rights.

But I’m an individualistic liberal. I think that groups are interesting only to the extent that there are people who suffer injustices as a member of a group, and that you can notice these group patterns and try to fight them. And there are questions about reparations and what you do about those, which is just a whole different set of questions. Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State and Utopia, cites a speaker’s book making a case for black reparations, with approval, saying, ‘Well, you know, maybe that’s possible’. But it’s a whole different set of questions than fundamental questions about what does a just society look like? Remedying past wrongs raises a distinctive set of problems which I haven’t gotten into at all in this book.

TLR: You just described yourself as a liberal. What do you believe is the difference between libertarianism and classical liberalism, if any?

AK: Well, the liberalism, as I identify with, does not have the kind of suspicion of the state of classical liberals like Richard Epstein and Milton Friedman. So you know, with what you’re trying to bring about, I want to bring about a world in which people are free to decide for themselves what their lives are going to be. And the fundamental difference between me and the libertarians is that they purport to want that too, but a minimal state will not deliver you that. A minimal state will deliver you conditions in which lots of people find their hopes thwarted at every turn.

One example that I think presents a real problem for a Rothbardian. And I end the book with an argument among old Rothbards about this is how do you deal with large misfortune that violates nobody’s rights, such as the outbreak of deadly disease. Such as COVID. And the way in which we managed to get COVID sufficiently under control that we could go back to our lives was through massive government taxation and spending. The government gave enormous amounts of money to pharmaceutical companies that would not have undertaken the vaccine research on their own because it was too risky. And as a result, we got a vaccine. And as a result, the death rate is far lower than it would have been if we had had an absolutely minimal state, or for a Rothbardian, no state at all. And so that suggests to me that if you want people to be free to conduct their lives as they like, a minimal state is not the way to deliver that.

TLR: Some of the people you seem to have chosen from that book, nobody can really disagree contributed a lot to libertarian thought. I mean, especially the Hayek, Rothbard, the Friedmans, and so forth. Hoppe I’m a little uncomfortable with, but makes sense. But one of the ones who you included was Ayn Rand, who was famously contemptuous of libertarianism. She called us a monstrous, disgusting group of people. She called us amoral plagiarists lower than Marxists.

AK: She was a very difficult person. (laughter) But, libertarians understand that she is enormously influential in the way that libertarians think. Someone once wrote a book about libertarianism, with the title, ‘It Usually Starts With Ayn Rand’. And that’s accurate. And she offered herself as a philosopher with strong affinities with libertarianism. She was extremely friendly for a while with Rothbard. Although, as with everybody else in her life, she eventually drove them away. And so I try to take her seriously as a writer and thinker. But, you know, as the person who was traumatized by living through the Russian Revolution, which involved massive corruption, incompetence, mass murder, and I think all her life, she was traumatized by that. But I try not to get into the biographical details, and I really tried to take her seriously as a thinker, because lots of libertarians take her seriously as a thinker. And so I try to look at her as a philosopher and ask – alright, so how good a philosopher is she? And the answer is not very good. But I think that you’re only entitled to say that if you take her seriously, seriously, look at her arguments.

TLR: There is a lot of overlap with objectivism, even past positions with a certain strain of respect for the kind of more individualistic anti-collectivism thrust of her work compared to what I see libertarian as, myself. Do you believe American libertarianism is right wing, left wing, neither, or something that draws for both?

AK: Well, it’s hard to classify because I mean, the the American right and the American left, both are clusters of the views in a two party system. People are going to have to form coalitions if they want to get anything done. And so each party clusters together all of us that don’t necessarily have anything intrinsically to do with one another? If you are in favor of tax cuts in American politics, you are probably against abortion. But those two really haven’t got anything to do with one another. So I just try to take libertarianism seriously as just the proposition that we’ll be freer if we reduce the state to little or nothing. And that’s a distinctive proposition. And I think it can be taken on its own terms without trying to locate it in a larger political currents.

TLR: One of the things you point out with the racism thing was that one of the changes to the LP platform that the Mises Caucus first made was to replace the words ‘we condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant’. And it’s presented as evidence of racism—as a reason for party defections of longtime members have been pretty strong since then. However, it was replaced with the words ‘we uphold and defend the rights of every person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or any other aspect of their identity’. What in your view is a major difference between the two statements from an actual public policy standpoint that makes them significantly enough different to focus on?

AK: I think it was generally understood that the deletion was more important than the addition. And it is, in fact, the reason why there were these mass defections from the party—which, if I’m right, was one of the things that was hoped would occur.

TLR: I mean, I can argue that there’s been some success if that’s an actual strategy rather than outcome. You infer also in your article that the Republican Party donors have been promoting the LPMC as a strategy specifically to destroy the party, which has been draining away Republican votes. You point out that had Trump gotten 100% of the LP vote in 2020, he would have won. However, exit polling has been pretty consistent among presidential elections showing roughly a third of LP voters without the libertarian option would have voted Democrat, a third wouldn’t have voted at all. It tends to be a third, a third, a third in most elections, more or less. How do you square the fear you think the GOP has of the LP with those numbers showing that it takes pretty evenly from both major parties?

AK: I simply note and again, here I’m relying on much more experienced reporters than me, people like The Nation who said, these are the people who have historically been associated with Trump and are financing the effort. They seem to be under the impression that they’re hoping to accomplish by doing that.

TLR: You claim part of the appeal of libertarianism to some Americans is racism. However, libertarians have led the way on plenty of issues that have had disproportionate effects on communities of color. They’ve opposed the drug war, they’ve opposed qualified immunity and the militarization of police and as acting as agents of the state against peaceful people. They’ve opposed zoning policies that segregated cities, and occupational licensing restrictions, and supported school choice, which they believe improves access to quality education for those trapped in low income government schools separated by zip code. They supported increased immigration and oppose Trump’s wall. They’ve described the military industrial complex as rich people sending the poor off to die fighting in countries already at a socioeconomic disadvantage themselves. Are there any issues other than reducing some social welfare programs or adding in work requirements or thinking some portions of the Civil Rights Act in the 60s were antithetical to the freedom of association… in libertarian thought than in the various iterations of the Republican or Democratic parties?

AK: Again, I’m not attacking libertarian thought, which, as I say in the book, you know, I barely talk about racism because it is not a significant part of libertarian thought. But with respect to those issues, like opposing civil rights laws, opposing welfare—or some people, that’s really all they care about. And all of the other aspects of the libertarian platform, which really would benefit African Americans, they don’t care about those one way or the other. By that, I mean, no question, getting rid of occupational licensing with respect to many professions like hairdressing, braiding where it’s just silly to have licensing? That would benefit African Americans, no question about it. But the folks I’m talking about don’t care about that one way or the other.

TLR: One of the things that separates libertarians from libertines is they’re focused on concepts like responsibility and self reliance, right? However, I think most libertarians would agree that reducing the government as radically as they’d like would require communities, societies, voluntary organizations to replace that government intervention—that excessive government interventions have stunted those types of institutions, right? I mean, some libertarians may be overly optimistic about human nature being strong enough to drive charity and mutual aid that’s adequate enough to take over those government functions. But doesn’t this expectation they have of community over central control sort of speak against libertarianism being exclusively individualistic or selfish pursuit?

I think you used the word autarky. But an expectation that communities and societies are stronger and more resilient than governments, if left to thrive, doesn’t seem to be something at peace with the kind of view of libertarianism as solitary, lonely, uncaring. So I guess my final question is, if you could make your pitch, that placing stuff like communities and social organizations and families above or at least separate from government realms—is that something that is delusional or greedy or attracts people who are delusional or greedy?

AK: Well, the place where I think that the alignment of delusion, greed is most clear, is in the area of regulation. And the book concludes by talking about the climate catastrophe that is occurring, that has been abetted by petroleum industry led by Charles Koch, who’s the most important libertarian in the United States today. In which, simultaneously, rests on a philosophy that really doesn’t do a very good job of thinking about pollution, and industries that will benefit financially by the absence of regulation—and who aren’t particularly principled at all. And they work in tandem together. So that’s the alignment of delusion and greed.

But with respect to the capacity of communities to step up and help one another, and you know, quite a lot of libertarians do hope that if you were able to reduce the footprint of the national government that people would step up. I think that it is a bigger ask than you’ve ever given to voluntary associations. Well, first of all, it’s not clear how voluntary associations could possibly deal with pollution. It’s very hard- I mean, how do you sue somebody in tort for warming up the planet? It is not something that can be done with anything but regulation.

And then some of the redistribution involved health care for poor people who get really bad diseases is far more expensive than the charity care that existed in the early 20th century. Some illnesses cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat, and either there is communal insurance for it, or the private charity system will be overwhelmed. This is matter of prediction, and different people have different predictions. Richard Epstein is very smart guy and he thinks that private charity would step up and do it. I just don’t believe it.

TLR: I was going to have that be my last question. But now that you say that, I did want to touch on one thing with the climate concerns. Near as I can tell, at least in 2022—it seems like most people from the side of Republicans, Democrats and libertarians, although they might not agree with the degree, I think most people are generally on board with believing climate change is real, impactful and impacted by human activity. I think that’s pretty well understood by most serious people on all three sides.

And the way I see it, all three sides are are giving some kind of solutions about it, right? Like the libertarians would say, ‘Oh, well, one of the problems with carbon emissions is the federal government’s failure to timely give out anything for new nuclear permitting for fear of the science of nuclear power. Or they might say, Well, what about carbon credits that can be bought and sold on the open market as a way to have market input and trading done on pollution to impose external costs that exist, which, there might be some problems with how you quantify that or whatever. But it’s been one idea that’s been put forth. And one of the things you mentioned was property rights claims, which might be easy to do if you’re actively polluting a river that then goes downstream somewhere, but it’s harder to do if you’re releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

And then you have, you know, the left, which is- just throw money at a whole bunch of different alternate fuel sources, which may or may not turn out to be efficient ones. Shutting down drilling before we’re ready. Until gas prices started getting higher. They did sometimes talk about making gas more expensive to incentivize that. But they didn’t seem to like, hold to that when it actually came because it was unpopular. And then you have Republicans who are just like, ‘yes, we know, it’s a problem. But we think the technology will just advance on its own. And we don’t think there’s much to do worth doing’.

My point is, why are the solutions that libertarians have put up there to address climate change better or worse than the solutions put up by people who are more left of center trying to address the same problems that libertarians are by supporting nuclear power and things like that?

AK: Well, the solutions that are most promising that are going to work? Well, the classic Hayekian solution is a tax on carbon, which actually was seriously proposed in the first Bush administration, and had Koch and Cato not worked so hard to spread fake science denying that anything was happening, that might have gone through.

And that really is the best solution. You just get people to incorporate the real costs of what they’re doing. And then the market creates incentives for people to come up with better technologies, what actually seems likely to do some good… because you know, all over the world, people don’t want to stay poor, they want to raise their standard of living, and they’re going to burn coal if they have to, in order to achieve that. And so the only way to stop them from warming the planet themselves is to come up with better technologies, and hand them to them on a platter and say here, don’t burn coal, do this instead.

And that’s the kind of research supported by government that gave us the COVID vaccine. And you’ve quite a lot of that kind of research funded in the climate bill that Biden just pushed through. And I think that that’s our only hope. You are not going to build massive nuclear plants in countries that are too poor to afford them.

TLR: Could you remind anyone reading this of the title of your book and where they can find it?

AK: The book is Burning Down The House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted By Delusion And Greed. I’m Andrew Koppelman. If you go looking on the internet, you’ll find copies of the book, very affordably priced, I’m happy to say 28.99. And if you read it, and you’re not persuaded by it, I want to hear from you and I want to hear why.

The post Koppelman’s Critiques of Libertarianism: Racism, Delusion, and Corruption appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

In the United States, the Biden administration just took a big step toward creating a New Green Republic with the passage of the falsely titled “Inflation Reduction Act.”  This new law may not reduce inflation, but by pumping another $370 billion into the economy, it sets the cornerstone for the new Republic.

Will these new republics be utopias or dictatorships? While only time will tell, a few places on earth are giving us a glimpse of the future.

Sri Lanka is an island nation off the coast of India. It had been rebuilding itself for decades after years of authoritarian rule. Its agriculture yield had so dramatically increased it had become a middle-income nation until its government banned the use of fertilizers for growing crops. The nation quickly became a nightmare with people starving, a third of its land dormant, crop yields cut in half, energy shortages, and skyrocketing inflation. The people revolted.

At the same time, the Netherlands government announced plans to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions, thereby forcing thousands of family farms to be closed. Another baffling move since Dutch farmers are the second largest food exporters in the world. The farmers launched protests similar to the Canadian truckers. The protests are ongoing.

Across the world, green governments are seeking to ban new factory farms, pesticides, and even the use of pesticides on private property, beef, turkey, chicken, and cheese. Environmentalists are even organizing a revolution against factory-made food. To some, the entire food system is a threat to the environment.

Several commentators attribute Sri Lanka’s fall to its president “being under the spell of western green elites peddling organic agriculture and seeking a high ESG” (Environment, Social and Governance) rating. Sri Lanka has a near-perfect ESG score of 98. The U.S. has a 51, down with Cuba and Bulgaria. The Netherlands has a 90.7 ESG score.

These woke-type governments are choosing “climate and ESG goals at the expense of feeding their populations and enabling citizens to keep their homes warm during the winter.” The Biden administration is also obsessed with following this path.

An ESG score is a numerical measure of how a corporation or country is perceived to perform on a wide range of environmental, social, and governance topics. The operative word in the definition is “perceived.” Unfortunately, there is a gap between what is real and what is perceived. An ESG score is simply a branding effort by authoritarian governments to secure money from international organizations.

This is where government decision-making becomes baffling. An ESG rating “explains” how a nation’s risk factors impact the long-term sustainability of the economy.  Why would a country with a growing economy and high ESG rating intentionally ban pesticides and harm the economy and health of its people? Why would the Biden administration want to eliminate fossil fuels and the 6,000 essential products made from its components to sabotage the living standards of Americans?

When decisions simply do not make sense, they simply do not make sense.

Decisions to throw a nation into turmoil actually conflict with the theoretical goal of ESG, which is to help investors assess the sustainability of a country. A nation in chaos is not sustainable under any circumstances. These arbitrary decisions more closely resemble decisions made by Caligula, the Roman emperor who gave his horse a majestic house and, to prove his absolute power, sought to appoint the horse to the high office of consul before being assassinated.

A “spell” to protect the environment should cause the bewitched ruler to protect the environment; while destroying the means to produce food or energy, the ruler forces the nation into chaos, perhaps revolution. Both outcomes destroy the environment. There must be a more existential reason.  Either it is a drive to form a utopia, or it’s the implementation of the radical environmental community’s long-held belief that humanity is a cancer on the earth, and must go.

Finding utopia has been a dream of philosophers for centuries. Their dreams are structured around a beneficial elite; religious dogma, science, communism, or totalitarianism.

If the ruler takes the utopian path, it would have to take the path described by some as the “Great Reset.”  ESG would become a “social credit system to drive ownership and production away from the non-woke or non-compliant.” It is a system in which profitable monopolies and the state rule by controlling data, artificial intelligence, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. Humans would only know what the elite allow them to know. All human thought would be controlled by the elite.

The major problem with the utopian model is the difficulty of feeding seven billion humans. The elite would have to develop a massive food production system which would be extremely expensive, especially with bans on pesticides and many foods. It would literally require the enslavement of much of the population. Since the cost of supporting billions of people in utopia is too high, the elite need an easier plan to control humans.

Plan B is the plan the radical community has written about for a century, the mass reduction of humans. The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic is a collection of quotations from the radical left that supports this view in their own words.

The famous undersea explorer, Jacque-Yves-Cousteau noted, “It’s terrible to have to say this. The world population must be stabilized and to do that, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn’t even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable.”

One of the wishes of Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, President of the World Wildlife Fund International was “If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” And, our college-age students are being taught that government must focus on reducing the world population by at least 80%.

Perhaps the most honest discussion of humans being cancer on the earth is presented in a 2019 essay in “Culturico,” a Swiss Cultural platform that bills itself as fighting misinformation. “Culturico” compares humans to cancer cells. The environment is our host, and humans’ selfish, harmful actions are destroying the host, just as a tumor would destroy living organisms in our body. The platform goes through the five steps of how tumors spread cancer. The essay ends with the question, “Can we conclude that humans are a cancer? Yes, we are.”

If the environmental community believes its own writings, and there is no reason to doubt its beliefs, its long-term goal is to radically reduce the human population on this planet.

So, the next time some ruler—be it president, minister, or chief—performs a baffling act that harms a large number of people for some inexplicable reason, ask yourself what the ruler’s real intentions are. The ruler may be stupid, evil, or power-hungry, but the ruler may also be following the elite’s playbook of wanting humans gone so they can inhabit the earth without us cancer cells threatening their reign of the planet.

Image Source: YouTube WION

The post Using Climate Change to Form Peopleless New Green Republics appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

From its first days, the Biden administration was using agencies to impose laws without congressional authority. The court noted it rejected the Biden administration’s use of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to mandate 84 million Americans either obtain a Covid-19 vaccine or submit to weekly testing. It also discussed its rejection of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s asserted authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium to stem the spread of Covid. Recognizing that federal agencies “were asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted,” it took up the EPA’s efforts to impose a climate change law by regulation.

The EPA and environmentalists (at times referred to jointly as the “environmental community”) sought, without any specific statutory authority, to impose a  comprehensive and costly regulatory structure to address climate change. To determine the extent of the EPA’s authority, the Supreme Court took up a case brought by the state of West Virginia, West Virginia vs Environmental Protection Agency (WVA v. EPA).

The court reaffirmed the legislative power of Congress holding that agencies cannot legislate without specific congressional authority.

To resolve the issue of whether agencies can make new laws by regulation, the Supreme Court, for the first time, announced the “Major Question Doctrine,” for analyzing an agency’s authority to regulate. The court made clear that regulatory agencies can only act on matters of economic and political significance if the agency… point[s] to ‘clear congressional authority.’”

While the Supreme Court could have narrowly resolved the controversy (EPA’s “new found authority” to impose a cap-and-trade scheme for carbon emissions) using statutory construction, it recognized that many agencies were finding “vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute[s]” as authority to regulate major economic and political issues without congressional authorization. The climate debate was the perfect set of facts for clarifying the roles of Congress and agencies.

Congress consistently rejected climate legislation

The court noted, “Congress, however, has consistently rejected proposals to amend the Clean Air Act to create such a program [regulating climate change].” It cited the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act of 2009, the Climate Protection Act of 2011, and Save our Climate Act of 2011. There were many more failed attempts by the environmental community to enact a comprehensive legal structure to address climate change: The Kyoto Protocol (Senate voted 95-0 against ratification), The Paris Agreement (Lacking votes, it was never submitted as a Treaty); McCain-Lieberman, Kerry-Lieberman-Graham, and others that never received a vote. Congress clearly spoke.

Efforts to make law by litigation

Realizing Congress would not impose a massive climate change scheme on American society, the environmental community orchestrated a nationwide litigation campaign to persuade courts to impose such a system. It filed lawsuits across the nation under any statute that might relate to climate change – Clean Air Act, (186), Endangered Species and other wildlife statutes (174), National Environmental Protection Act (322), Clean Water Act (58), miscellaneous land use statutes (168), constitutional claims under the Commerce Clause (20), First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments (41); under state laws (464), common law (29), public trust (27) and securities and financial statutes (24). The environmental community had some successes; however, its overreach ended in a defeat for the administrative state.

Using Executive Orders to make climate law

On Biden’s first day in office, he issued several Executive Orders to address climate change. Biden further directed all executive departments to place a moratorium on oil and gas leasing programs and establish the Social Cost of Carbon to justify the high cost of the regulatory structure. A week later, Biden ordered a whole-of-government approach to address climate change. This order was followed by the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rules which again raise the question of identifying the needed congressional authority.

The futile regulatory march to circumvent Congress ends

While the environmental community worked for decades to impose a climate change law by regulation or litigation, it was the Biden administration’s sheer arbitrary use of the regulatory process that captured the Supreme Court’s attention.

As the environmental community was suffering legislative defeat after defeat, Obama’s EPA issued an “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases contributed to man-made climate change that may endanger public health and welfare.  This finding served as the foundation for the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) regulations, the issue decided in WVA v. EPA.  The CPP was a cap-and-trade rule. President Trump repealed the CPP and put in its place the Affordable Clean Energy rule that limited EPA’s regulatory power to available emission reduction technologies, consistent with the Clean Air Act. On Trump’s last day in office, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Trump rule; however, before President Biden could reinstate a new CPP rule, the Supreme Court accepted the case for review.

The Supreme Court establishes regulatory sanity

While the Supreme Court held that “Congress could not have intended to delegate a decision of such economic and political significance (regulation of climate change) to an agency [EPA] in so cryptic of a fashion,” its decision limits the regulatory power of all agencies to enact major political and economic matters unless the agency can point to “clear congressional authority.”

Had the environmental community been successful in expanding the authority of agencies to regulate climate change without statutory authorization, many agencies would search for and find “long-extant authorities” to further diminish the role of Congress. By reaffirming the constitutional powers of Congress, and placing limits on the Executive’s power to legislate using the rulemaking process, the Supreme Court also solidified its role as a co-equal branch of our government.

The most gratifying aspect of the long battle over the power of EPA to regulate climate change is the ironic ending to the struggle. In the end, the EPA’s aggressive regulatory overreach resulted in limits being placed on the regulatory powers of all federal agencies.

The post The Supreme Court Ends Federal Agency Lawmaking appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Predictions of apocalyptic events have been made since humankind created the calendar needed for assigning the year in which the apocalypse will occur. Predictions include an antichrist, the elimination of humanity and species, the end of the world, and judgment day. All from false prophets. The prediction of a climate change apocalypse will likely occur but not from an event totally outside of human control or even high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rather the apocalypse will be caused by the only entity on earth that can cause an apocalypse. That entity is government—and Joe Biden, in biblical terms, is the vessel that will make it happen.

The climate hysterics describe a world that is full of disease, melting sea ice causing extreme worldwide flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, raging forest fires, cities with regular temperatures over 120 degrees, water so acidic as to harm marine life, and starvation over much of the world.

President Biden tells Americans in his usual “tough talk” that climate change is the “number one issue facing humanity.” That the climate crisis poses “the existential threat to human existence as we know it.” He promises “We are going to get rid of fossil fuels,” and the United States will cut its greenhouse gas emissions 50-52% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

Biden’s policy advisors implement his policies by shutting down oil and gas pipelines, denying investors the capital needed to produce fossil fuels, and regulating almost every manufactured product from cars to light bulbs. They also propose spending trillions more dollars on green energy in a highly inflationary economy so we can live in an environmental nirvana free of climate anxiety.

Unfortunately, to meet his policy of a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 Biden still needs to reduce emissions by 15 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. Worse, “U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose by 6.2% last year (2021) compared with 2020.” Moreover, even with gas at $5 a gallon, consumption is close to its pre-pandemic highs.

Moreover, whatever the government mandates, the wealthy will continue to use private jets, and live in massive estates, and even estates on the beach where flooding is likely. They have all the food, water, transportation, housing, high-value goods, and servants they could ever need for many lifetimes. The average person suffers from the government’s actions to address climate change. They suffer inflation, high energy prices, and a lower standard of living.

Even if Biden were the son of Obama, there is nothing reasonable he can do to tame the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. That was all attempted by the prior “god.” The radical environmental groups want Biden to take Congress behind the proverbial gym and beat the hell out of it like he promised to do to Trump. Biden likely believes he can take Congress behind the gym. After all, he shakes hands with invisible persons, believes the U.S. has the fastest growing economy in the world and has the Easter bunny rescuing him from pontificating about his delusions in public.

President Biden, your term as president is not over, however, you have very little support among ordinary people who must work every day for a living. Your best hope of being a transformative president is to do whatever the radical left believes is needed to eliminate fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the Left views your presidency as a series of half measures, perhaps only quarter measures. Scranton Joe, you can prove them wrong.

Keep up hope. A delusional mind can find reality in strange ways…

A few days ago, I found an embargoed copy of the Left’s Manifesto on Climate Change. The Left intends to give it to Kamala Harris after it forces you to resign. You have done so much for the radical Left; it is unfair to deprive you of the opportunity to fulfill their dreams. So, I am giving you this draft. Since you are very good at taking credit for the work of others, I suggest you get a pen, a lot of ink and the largest roll of two-ply toilet paper you can find. Then, start writing an Executive Order that promises to achieve all of the Left’s dreams.

*Joe Biden quickly scribbles*

“I, Joe Biden, President of the U.S. do hereby order that all my cabinet Secretary Office Boys, girls, LGBTQIA+ and every person, of every gender, subject to my rule, (illegals are free of all restrictions), and especially the wealthy ones, obey the following commands:

1. All private plane travel is hereby prohibited since rich people ravage the planet and this order is an excuse to permanently live at my beach house.
2. All limousine travel is prohibited, except for elected Democrats at the federal, state or local level.
3. All limousines are prohibited from carrying the Buttigieg bicycle and dropping it off a few blocks from his office so he looks like he commutes by bike. (bracketed note, “Let Buttigieg walk.”)
4. All new houses and apartments must be under 2000 square feet.
5. All existing houses over 2000 square feet must be converted to shared living quarters with illegal immigrants having living priority over anyone, including the owner. This provision shall not apply to Democrats willing to exhibit hypocrisy in public and be criticized by conservative media. Demonstrated hypocrisy reveals leadership.
6. All office buildings must remove elevators since walking stairs is healthy.
7. Buildings will be warmed by body heat in the winter and cooled by paper fans in the summer for as long as there is paper.
8. All 6000 products made from oil and gas are hereby banned. “

 Biden’s staff attaches a partial list of just 144 of the 6000 items so the public has some idea of what illegal items are made from oil or gas. Keep in mind that 42 – a gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline. The rest (over half) is used to make the following unneeded products that citizens may not realize are destroying the planet:

Adhesives, Air mattresses, Ammonia, Antifreeze, Antihistamines, Antiseptics, Artificial limbs, Artificial turf, Asphalt, Aspirin, Awnings, Backpacks, Balloons, Ballpoint pens, Bandages, Beach umbrellas, Boats, Cameras, Candies and gum, Candles, Car battery cases, Car enamel, Cassettes, Caulking, CDs/computer disks, Cell phones, Clothes, Clothesline, Clothing, Coffee makers, Cold cream, Combs, Computer keyboards, Computer monitors, Cortisone, Crayons, Credit cards, Curtains, Dashboards, Denture adhesives, Dentures, Deodorant, Detergent, Dice, Dishwashing liquid, Dog collars, Drinking cups, Dyes, Electric blankets, Electrical tape, Enamel, Epoxy paint, Eyeglasses, Fan belts, Faucet washers, Fertilizers, Fishing boots, Fishing lures, Floor wax, Food preservatives, Footballs, Fuel tanks, Glue, Glycerin, Golf bags, Golf balls, Guitar strings, Hair coloring, Hair curlers, Hand lotion, Hearing aids, Heart valves, House paint, Hula hoops, Ice buckets, Ice chests, Ice cube trays, Ink, Insect repellent, Insecticides, Insulation, iPad/iPhone, Kayaks, Laptops, Life jackets, Light-weight aircraft, Lipstick, Loudspeakers, Lubricants, Luggage, Model cars, Mops, Motorcycle helmets, Movie film, Nail polish, Noise insulation, Nylon rope, Oil filters, Packaging, Paint brushes, Paint roller, Pajamas, Panty hose, Parachutes, Perfumes, Permanent press, Petroleum jelly, Pharmaceuticals, Pillow filling, Plastic toys, Plastics, Plywood adhesive, Propane, Purses, Putty, Refrigerants, Refrigerator linings, Roller skate wheels, Roofing, Rubber cement, Rubbing alcohol, Safety glasses, Shampoo, Shaving cream, Shoe polish, Shoes/sandals, Shower curtains, Skateboards, Skis Soap dishes, Soft contact lenses, Solar panels, Solvents, Spacesuits, Sports car bodies, Sunglasses, Surf boards, Swimming pools Synthetic rubber Telephones Tennis rackets Tents Tires Tool boxes Tool racks, Toothbrushes, Toothpaste, Transparent tape, Trash bags, Truck and automobile parts, Tubing, TV cabinets, Umbrellas, Unbreakable dishes, Upholstery, Vaporizers, Vinyl flooring, Vitamin capsules, Water pipes, Wind turbine blades, Yarn. Top of Form

Pretty much everything produced by man includes or requires petroleum products. By banning the production of oil and gas and the products made from it, the Biden administration will clearly achieve the Left’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

President Biden, banning all oil and gas production will make you the most Transformative President in U.S. history. You will achieve every goal of the radical Left.  With the banning of these 6000 products and items, there will be little work for the masses. This will allow you to print more and more money and distribute it quickly since you only need electrons. Please, however, use the electrons quickly since the grid is likely to go down.

The Left’s economists that preach Modern Monetary Theory will praise you on every street corner since there will no longer be television interviews due to the ban on the materials needed to produce the sets. Unfortunately, since there will be almost nothing to purchase, putting money in bank accounts will be a “futile and stupid gesture.”

After a while there will be massive food shortages and a great loss of life, that is the goal of the radical environmental movement. One of its great thinkers, Jacque Yves-Cousteau, stated – “It’s terrible to have to say this. The world population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn’t even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable.”

Finally, without Americans having access to industrial production, energy, and food, China will be the world superpower since it will not follow the U.S.’s lead on meeting climate goals. Ignore the grim news however, this is a fabulous opportunity for your son, Hunter. He will likely receive a very large bonus from the Chinese for giving you sound advice on transforming the U.S. By taking Hunter’s advice, Mr. President, you will be in all the history books as the most transformative ruler in the history of the world. You will exceed Nero; it took him 14 years to collapse the Roman Empire. You will collapse the U.S. in four—a remarkable record, and one worthy of a Nobel Prize.

Bye, Bye American Pie. There is nothing more to divide!

The post A Modest Proposal to Stop Climate Change appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Thomas Catenacci on November 16, 2021

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez confused a number of facts about fossil fuels in a video to her followers explaining why pipelines are bad for the country.

The congresswoman mistakenly asserted that the Keystone XL and Line 3 pipelines were proposed to increase U.S. natural gas exports in the video she posted on her Instagram account Saturday. The two pipelines would transport crude oil, not natural gas, from Canada into the U.S. as an import, according to their operators.

“When you look at Keystone XL, and when you look at a lot of these other pipelines, people say, ‘Oh, this is for energy, you know, independence in the United States,’” Ocasio-Cortez stated during the video which has garnered more than 180,000 views. “We actually already produce enough to power our own country, whether you agree with it or not.”

“A lot of these pipelines are being built so that the United States can export and sell natural gas abroad,” she continued. “And, you know, people make geopolitical arguments as to why that should be the case.”

Line 3 has transported crude oil into the U.S. through Minnesota since the 1960s. Enbridge, the company that operates the pipeline, is currently constructing a $2.9 billion Line 3 replacement, but the company has faced intense resistance from environmental activists.

Ocasio-Cortez said that she believes Line 3 “should not exist.”

The Keystone XL pipeline would have similarly taken crude oil into the U.S. from western Canada. However, the pipeline — proposed as an extension to an already existing line that stretches from North Dakota to Texas — was canceled by its operator TC Energy after President Joe Biden revoked its federal permit.

More than 20 states have accused the president of overstepping his constitutional authority in an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging the permit revocation.

“The President has certain prerogatives to act on behalf of the United States in foreign affairs,” the lawsuit stated. “But as far as domestic law is concerned, the President must work with and abide by the limits set by Congress—whether he likes them or not.”

Republicans and fossil fuel industry advocates have argued that ensuring the U.S. has a steady, reliable supply of oil and natural gas protects national security. They also argue that the U.S. should leverage its own natural resources to be a net exporter of oil and gas rather than rely on foreign powers for energy.

But the Biden administration has hamstrung the U.S. fossil fuel industry, canceling pipelines, abandoning large drilling projects and introducing sweeping regulations, while asking Middle Eastern countries for more oil and Russia for more gas.

The post AOC Confuses Natural Gas For Oil In Video Explaining Why Pipelines Are Bad appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

However when one reads the actual words of the Left, there is a disconnect between promises and intent. The Left manipulates words such as “green” (referencing environmentalism, a positive concept to many), to cover up its ‘red’ or socialist agenda (a negative concept to many). The manipulation of words is a proven political approach used to diminish freedom.

George Orwell noted, “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful…and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Thus, necessity, many times, requires those seeking power over us to corrupt words so we believe something other than the advocate’s true purpose.

My new book, The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic, is a collection of quotes from the left that advocate “capitalism must go,” “truth is not relevant,” “humans must go to save the planet,” and that without following its mandates, “the world will end in twelve years.” In the day of Covid-19, it is frightening to read the words of Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh – “If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”

Jacques Cousteau, one of the world’s most noted conservationists, using precise numbers, proposes, “World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.”

The reference to a “Little Red Book” alludes to Chairman Mao’s book of quotations: words proclaiming “truth” and a vision of utopia. His book educated the masses on politically correct thinking. Mao’s actions, however, were some of the most brutal in all of history.

The Left emulates Mao’s tactics. It preaches utopia and correct thinking while seeking domination. In 2020 America, The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic describes how the political left use concern for the environment (Green New Deal, climate change) to attack capitalism and scare the country into socialism.

The Left’s Little Red Book captures the complex interrelationships between the radical Left, socialism, and environmentalism in under a half-hour, easy read. These small books are called “chapbooks.” They have been around since the 16^th century, initially used as educational books. The Left’s Little Red Book is an educational effort to expose the words of the Left so citizens can compare the actual spoken words against the promises of “utopia.”

There is no substitute for understanding the Left other than reading its actual words. General descriptions of their words would not be believable in a society that protects the rights of citizens. Reading the actual words of the Left equips one to recognize how the Left is misleading the American people with a promise of a Green New Deal, and claims this is the moment “when the rise of oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…”

The reader will quickly appreciate where the Left wants to take this country. The New Green Republic will be a perfectly designed political state with a well-functioning regulatory machine that ensures “politically correct-thought” by the “masses.”

Of the literally millions of statements by the Left on the benefits of their Green New Deal and the regulation of society to “reduce the impacts of climate change,” there is not one utterance about the rights of people in a society. Every statement by the Left “puts us in our place,” “tells us how to live,” and “what to think.” The quotes from the Left merely confirm its goal of creating a country where free people cannot live.

To quote Peter Berle, president of the National Audubon Society, 1985-1995, “We reject the idea of private property.”

Welcome to the New Green Republic!

The post The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

It’s amazing how the prospect of death clarifies priorities.

Before the virus, we indulged in all sorts of luxuries such as dabbling in dirtiness and imagining a world purified by bucolic naturalness. But when the virus hit, we suddenly realized that a healthy life really matters and that natural things can be very wicked. And then when government put everyone under house arrest and criminalized freedom itself, we realized many other things too. And we did it fast.

Lots of people are predicting how life will fundamentally change in light of our collective experience this last month. I agree but I don’t think it will turn out quite as people think. This whole period has been an unconscionable trauma for billions of people, wrecking lives far beyond what even the worst virus could achieve. I’m detecting enormous, unfathomable levels of public fury barely beneath the surface. It won’t stay beneath the surface for long.

Our lives in the coming years will be defined by forms of blowback in the wake of both the disease and the egregious policy response, as a much needed corrective. The thing is that you can’t take away everyone’s rights, put a whole people under house arrest, and abolish the rule of law without generating a response to that in the future.

1. Blowback Against Media

I’m a long-time fan of the New York Times. Jeer if you want but I’ve long admired their reporting, their professionalism, their steady hand, their first draft of history, even if I don’t share the paper’s center-left political bent.

Something about this virus caused the paper to go completely off the rails. In early March, they began to report on it as if it were the Black Death, suggesting not just closing schools and businesses but actually calling for a complete totalitarian policy. It was shocking and utterly preposterous. The guy who wrote that article has a degree in rhetoric from Berkeley and yet he was calling the shots on the paper’s entire response to disease on a national level. They’ve gone so far as to falsify dates in their reporting in order to manipulate the timeline (I called them out on a case in point; the paper made the change but never admitted the error.)

I’m sure that in the coming days and weeks, the paper will dial back all this blather just as they did their certainty that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election. In fact, they have already started with an admission that the virus was already widespread in the months before the lockdown (which suggests that most everything else the paper has written since March has been wrong). But it will be too late. They bear some moral culpability for what has happened to our country.

Anyway, I don’t want to pick on the Times alone; the media has been nearly in lockstep on the need for lockdown forever and on the claim that this virus is universally lethal for everyone. You can read in various spots alternative opinions from experts (here here here here here here here plus a thousand others plus videos with serious voices).

But notice that all these links point to sites that do not enjoy viral traffic. AIER has been a leading voice, obviously.

Once you get up to speed on the real story here, with authoritative voices, you turn on Fox, CNN, NYT, CNBC, and all of the rest (the WSJ has been slightly better), and you hear nothing about any of this. They merely spin tales. People glued to the tube have almost no clue about any basics, such as how long the virus has been here, how gigantic is the denominator that makes up the fatality ratio, how many people have zero symptoms so that it’s not even an annoyance, the true demographic makeup of the victim population, and the unlikelihood that many of these deaths would have been preventable through any policy.

Watching this disgusting parade of media-driven ignorance, genuine experts or even people  passingly curious about data, have become demoralized. Surely many people have already stopped listening to the news completely because it is nothing but a distraction from the reality on the ground.

Why and how did this happen? An obvious answer seems almost too simple: the media wants people at home staring at the television. Maybe that’s the whole thing. But it almost seems too cynical to be the full explanation. In any case, I’m not the only one noticing this. I seriously doubt that the credibility of the mainstream media will survive this. There will be blowback. Much needed!

2. Blowback Against Politicians

You do recall, don’t you, that the governors and mayors who imposed the lockdowns never asked their citizens about their views about instantly getting rid of all rights and freedoms. They didn’t consult legislatures. They didn’t consult a range of expert opinion or pay attention to any serious demographic data that showed how utterly preposterous it was to force non-vulnerable populations into house arrest while trapping vulnerable populations in nursing homes that became Covid-soaked killing fields.

They thought nothing of shattering business confidence, violating contractual rights, wrecking tens of millions of lives, prohibiting freedom in association, tanking the stock market, blowing all budgets, shutting down international travel, and even closing the churches. Amazing. Every government executive except a few became a tin-pot dictator.

The first hint of the possible blowback came from Henry Kissinger who warned in the Wall Street Journal on April 8: “Nations cohere and flourish on the belief that their institutions can foresee calamity, arrest its impact and restore stability. When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed.”

Yes, that’s quite an understatement.

From testing failures to policy failures to profligate fiscal and monetary policies to straight up brutalism in its shutdown antics, the reputation of government in general will not fare well. When the dust settles on this, a whole generation of leaders could be wiped out, provided we return to democratic forms of government, which surely we will. Left or right, Republican or Democrat, there will be a serious price to pay. Politicians acted rashly for fear of their political futures. They will find that they made the wrong choice.

3. Blowback Against Environmentalism

Wash your hands, they kept telling us. But we turn on the faucet and hardly anything comes out. They ruined them some years ago with flow stoppers. The water isn’t hot because the hot-water heaters don’t work as well due to regulations. Keep your clothing and dishes clean but our washing machines and dishwashers hardly work. And let us not forget that our toilets are also non-functional.

Government has wrecked sanitation by ruining our appliances in the name of conservation. And now we suddenly discover that we care about cleanliness and getting rid of germs: nice discovery! Implementing this is going to require that we upend the restrictions, pull out the flow stoppers, permission new and functioning toilets, turn up our water heaters, fix the detergents and so on. We played fast and loose with germs and now we regret it.

So yes, plastic bags are back, and the disease-carrying reusables are gone, but that’s just the beginning. Recycling mandates will go away. Hand dryers in bathrooms will be rethought. Bring back single-use items and universalize them! We will care again about the quality of life as a first priority. As for nature and nature’s germs, be gone!

4. Blowback Against Social Distance

Staying away from direct contact with sick people is a good idea; we’ve known since the ancient world. Vulnerable populations need to be especially careful, such as elderly people have always known. But government took this sensible idea and went crazy with it, separating everyone from everyone else, all in the name of “flattening the curve” to preserve hospital capacity. But then this principle became a general one, to the point that people were encouraged to believe silly things like that standing too close to anyone will magically cause COVID-19 to appear. Going to the grocery today, it’s pretty clear that people think you can get it by talking or looking at people.

Several friends have pointed out to me that they already detect a blowback against all this. And why? There is a dubious merit to the overly generalized principle, and that will become more than obvious in the coming months. Then the blowback hits. I expect a widespread social closening movement to develop here pretty quickly. You will see the bars and dance floors packed, and probably a new baby boom will emerge in a post-COVID19 world.

And the handshake will again become what it began as, a sign of mutual trust.

5. Blowback Against Regulation

In the midst of panic, we discovered that many rules that govern our lives don’t make sense. The regulations on disease testing clogged the system and gave us an epistemic crisis that kicked off this insanity in the first place. Fortunately many politicians did the right thing and repealed many of them. The Americans for Tax Reform has assembled a list of 350 regulations that have been waived. This is hugely encouraging. Let’s keep them waived and never go back.

6. Blowback Against Digital Everything

We keep hearing how this trauma is going to cause everyone to communicate more with video. I don’t believe it. Everyone is experiencing tremendous burnout of these sterile digital environments. Hey, it’s great that they can happen but they are far from ideal.

“Can you hear me?”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Is my picture blurry?”

“Why am I looking up your nose?”

“Change your settings.”

“Silence your mic!”

And so on. At first we thought this was merely a period of adjustment. Now we know that we just don’t like all this nonsense. It’s no way to live.

There is nothing like real people in a real room.

7. Blowback Against Anti-Work

I suppose many workers weren’t entirely unhappy when the boss said work from home. But millions of people have now discovered that this comes at a cost. There is loneliness. The dog. The kids. The spouse. The depressing failure to dress up like a civilized human being. Everyone I know misses the office. They want to be back, be on a schedule, see friends again, experience the joy of collaboration, share jokes, munch on the office donuts.

It was only recently that everyone seemed to be complaining about the workplace. There were endless squabbles about pay, pay equity, race, metoo, executive compensation, family leave policies, and you name it. No one seemed happy.

We didn’t know how good we had it.

8. Blowback Against Experts

The media from the beginning trumpeted some experts over others. We went credential crazy. How many letters you have after your name determines your credibility (unless you have the wrong opinion). But soon we discovered some interesting realities. The experts that everyone wanted to cite were wrong or so loose with their predictions that their predictions were useless in practice. Dr. Fauci himself wrote on February 28 that this would be a normal flu. Merely a week later, everything changed from calm to panic, and with that change came the wild government response, long after people on their own realized that being careful would be a good idea. Under expert guidance, we swung from one end to the other with very little evidence, exactly against the strong and compelling advice of one of the few experts with credibility remaining.

9. Blowback Against Academia

Just like that, we went from enormously expensive campuses and a huge administrative apparatus to a series of Zoom calls between professor and students, leaving many to wonder what the rest is really worth. Surely many colleges and universities will not survive this. The other problem concerns the marketability of degrees in a world in which whole industries can be shut down in an instant. The college degree was supposed to give us security; the lockdowns took it all away. Also there is the problem of the curriculum itself. Of what value are these soft degrees in social justice in a world in which you are struggling to pay next month’s rent regardless?

As for elementary and secondary education, homeschooling anyone? Its existed under a cloud for decades, before suddenly it became mandatory.

10. Blowback Against Unhealthy Lifestyles

There has been no small effort to suppress the demographics of COVID-19 fatalities but the word is still getting out. This BBC headline sums it up: Nine in 10 dying have existing illness. And here’s another: Obesity is the number one factor in COVID deaths. This should not be lost on people considering improving their overall health and reducing disease vulnerability. Maybe you already feel it and are using your quarantine time to reduce and get fit or at least stop advancing too quickly toward your final demise. There are things we can do, people!

This would be an enormous change in American culture, to say the least.

11. Blowback Against Spending

You are likely saving lots of money from cutting entertainment. Feels good, doesn’t it? Regret not having saved more to prepare for these days? This will change dramatically. Those mattresses are going to get stuffed with cash in the coming year or two. It’s all fine: savings leads to investment, provided people have an ironclad promise that nothing like the monstrous destruction of the last month will ever occur again.

This article is republished with permission from the American Institute for Economic Research.

The post There Will Be Blowback, In Mostly Good Ways appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Daily Caller News Foundation Productions 

Tree rights activists turned a Seattle City Council meeting into a musical to get their point across Wednesday.

“There’s a hole in the sky where the tree once was. Somebody’s making money,” they sang.

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Dan Crenshaw Slams Social Security

How Many Times Did The Democrats Say ‘Trump’ In the CNN Debate?

These People Roast Trump Only To Find Out It Was Obama!

We Asked People In D.C. If They Believe That Wearing A Make America Great Again Hat Was Racist

Chilling Stories Straight From The Border!

Jim Jordan Wants To Hold The Russian Collusion Investigators Accountable

Expert Advice On How To Dress For Court! Courtesy Of Roger Stone

Ted Cruz Wants El Chapo To Pay For The Border Wall!

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post Tree Activists Turn Seattle City Council Meeting Into A Musical appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Chris White 

New South Wales police have charged more than 20 people for deliberately starting fires across Australia as the country beats back wildfires. Activists and celebrities say climate change played a part in the blaze.

The NSW Police Force has taken legal action against 180 people since the end of 2019, according to local reports. Australian fires have killed 18 people and claimed the lives of hundreds of millions of animals.

Roughly 24 people have been charged for allegedly starting bushfires, while another 53 people allegedly failed to comply with a total fire ban. Dozens of people allegedly discarded cigarettes on dry land.

Many people blamed climate change for super-stoking Australia’s wildfires.

Hollywood actor Russell Crowe, for instance, said Sunday through a message delivered by actress Jennifer Aniston that global warming global warming is partially to blame. She delivered the message at the Golden Globe Awards’ ceremony.

“Make no mistake,” wrote Crowe, who has a home in Australia. “The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is.”

Crowe won the best actor award for his role in “The Loudest Voice.” The Washington Post’s Editorial Board also weighed in on the topic, telling its readers Monday that Australia’s wildfires should be a warning to the rest of the world and to those who are sceptical of climate change.

“This is the future humanity is writing for itself, right now, every day world governments waste failing to respond to climate change,” the Editorial Board noted before hedging to remind readers that there are probably other factors involved.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Image: Gena Dray

The post Australian Police Have Charged Several People For Intentionally Setting Bushfires. Activists Blamed Climate Change appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.