Like many people throughout the Midwest, my wife and I had the
“pleasure” of dealing with yet another ice storm grinding its way
across an already white, frigid landscape. Unlike the smaller
disturbance of a week or so ago, this time we suffered a brown-out that
eventually escalated into a full-blown outage. No lights. No stove. No
heat. No television. No computer usage. No Internet access. We were
reduced to huddling before a small gas fireplace for warmth and heating
leftovers on an ancient Svea camp stove. For entertainment, we read and
played cards.
Coincidentally, I am reading
Atlas Shrugged for the third or
fourth time. Each excursion into that massive tome yields new insights,
new moments of recognition, new depths of enjoyment. In that
time-frozen world, Rand painted a society in the throes of stagnation
and facing a lingering death. Bleak, barren, and cold imagery dominants
her portrayal of a culture that despises wealth, denigrates
achievement, and jealously nurtures its petty envy and disdain for all
that is good, moral, and worthy.
I cannot help but draw parallels between that decaying fictional
society and the environmental movement that claws for our attention
today. Both abhor technological advances. Both nod sagely at those who
prefer constriction over growth, despair over joy, austerity over
comfort. Both agree that humans are born to suffer, that we are a
blight upon the earth, that we deserve to shrink into the ground,
contrite and humble at our insignificance.
When Hank Rearden’s wife holds a party for their wedding anniversary,
no one there beyond Hank and Dagny Taggart appreciate the achievements
required to hold the darkness and the chill and the wind of the
“natural” world at bay. The obliviousness of the simultaneously
self-congratulatory and self-condemning guests to the skill and
rationality and courage necessary to obtain their shell of protection
is no different than the willful ignorance of today’s eco-fascists who
castigate every one else for “ruining” the planet while they jet about
in private planes, live in lavish homes, consume copious amounts of
energy, and spend more wealth in a month than most of us will in a
lifetime.
Sitting in the dark, shivering, wondering what new “surprise” Mother
Nature has in store for us, I can only think about these anti-human
monsters and grind my teeth in anger. They
want me to cower in the night. They
want me to feel tendrils of cold seeping into my bones. They
want
me to succumb to hunger pangs. They curl their lips at my desire to
shove back the blackness with a blaze of light. They frown at my
fondness for warmth and ease. They glower at humans like me who seek to
control the world rather than be controlled by it.
I can only hope that any “environmentalist” who yammers about “climate
change” and “global warming” and blames humans for what is simply part
of a natural cycle; I hope such “carbon-footprint” obsessed fools are
stuck somewhere, alone, without power, for weeks and months and years
until the rest of the country finally realizes the sick and dangerous
farce the eco-fascists have perpetrated upon a well-meaning but
gullible public.
Until then, excuse me while I hold my hands above the fire and ponder what it really means to be “human.”
(from
Don't Get Me Started!, 12-12-07)
