Sunday, September 19, 2010

The OC responds

I really like Hal (the OntologicalComedian, or OC for short).  He is smart and makes solid, effective arguments.

He and I recently got into a little back-and-forth over AGW (renamed yet AGAIN this week from 'Climate Change' to 'Climate Disruption' in an effort to mask the fact that there is no warming occurring in the 21st century).  His latest comment posts inspired me to make this entry.

Hal believes the AGW science.  I do not.  I won't be convinced that the frauds in East Anglia are doing anything but manufacturing propaganda to help bring about the glorious One-World Socialist Utopia.  Does this make me anti-science?  Hal intimates as much.
In the 60s/early 70s, when some idiots went around calling police "pigs" and that sort of thing, there was the saying "OK, when you get mugged, call a hippie". By the same token, since you don't seem to believe there is a real pursuit of truth in scientific institutions, if you get cancer, call a blogger.
But I haven't criticized medical science...or physical science...or any other branch of science.  The practitioners of those branches of science actually practice the scientific method - results are falsified, tested, and retested, until the findings are a certain as can be possible in this imperfect world.  No one shouts down scientists who deny that coffee is health food.  No one prevents the publishing of contradictory articles claiming that coffee is good for you or bad for you.  No one tries to deny funding to studies of pain management.  Or those trying to falsify the results of those studying it.  Yet those techniques are employed and applauded by AGW true believers!  If that doesn't make one suspicious, then I have no further argument that might possibly convince them.

Hal takes issue with my references to the Propagandist-in-Chief of the AGW crowd as "Al Gorebells".  Yet, can ANYONE deny that Gorebells is the best propagandist this world has seen since the master, Joseph Goebbels?  His movie is a monument to propaganda and quack science.  I will not cease to refer to Mr. Gorebells by that name until it is universally acknowledged that the man is a fraud seeking to cash in, not a prophet seeking to "save the planet".

Hal and I agree on one very important thing: government, in league with large multinational corporations, is a power to be feared.  Where we differ is in degree of guilt.  Prior to the 1850's there was no such thing as a giganticus mega-corporation.  What happened to change that?  Railroads.  The government started choosing winners and losers among those endeavoring to build America's railroads.  It was government that created the monster...and, before long, it was government in bed with that monster against We the People.  Hal believes it is the corporations who are the power behind the monster.  I disagree.  But only in degrees; after all, the people who power the multinationals are the same people occupying positions of power in our corrupt government.  See Chaney, Geithner, Greenspan, Bernanke, et al. 

One thing Hal said that I wish to correct, posthaste:
There is nothing magically virtuous or magically demonic about government, and you can't just trust a government with the power to redistribute all wealth, and expect good things to happen. The government is simply the Res Public, (ironically the party that took its name from that now goes around mouthing the belief that you can't trust anything to a Res Public, except the ability to wage war and seize people by force and put them in jail -- don't trust them with health care or you'll inevitably get a totalitarian society).
If by any stretch Hal thinks that I'm one of those "except the ability to wage war and seize people by force and put them in jail" people, I want to categorically disabuse him of that notion - right now. A true small-"L" libertarian wants neither government health care NOR a government running amok among the nations inflicting Democracy at bayonet point.  A libertarian wants the ridiculous laws that unnecessarily put people in jail for what are truly victimless crimes revoked.  Drug laws?  Not a Federal issue.  Prostitution?  I don't like it...but I don't want people in jail for it, either.  I, like other libertarians, simply want to be left alone to live our lives without the uncertainty of government sticking its nose into our lives.

Government is a necessary evil.  Without government, the "society of contract" cannot exist.  Without the "society of contract", trade cannot exist, and we're back to feudalism.  But when government starts to dictate winners and losers, especially via a tax structure that specifically targets small businessmen and the upper middle class as "losers", that is a government that must be changed.