"So this is how liberty dies... "

I ran across an article from the Times Online, stating that Vladimir Putin had banished casinos from most of Russia, essentially exiling them to the nether regions of the land. Not a particularly fresh piece of news, I read a similar article a day or two ago.
But this one caught my eye.

The story is unsettling; this is just the latest example of Putin basically re-instating himself as Czar. Freedom in Russia was a tumultuous but short-lived affair, evidently.

Upon reaching the end of the article, what I found was comments by my fellow Americans, and a Canadian. Far from decrying this bit of arbitrary power-wielding by an increasingly dictatorial Putin, they applauded it. (interpret the italics as sort of a shocked, wide-eyed whisper)

Samples from the three which greeted me include:

"MR Putin has got it right if only the USA would put a stop to all the casinos..."

"...I hope he bans alcohol too as it's the curse of Russia bringing misery to millions."

"Good law. Good sign Putin could resist the criminal elements. Alcoholism needs health and moral-choice education beginning in elementary school..."

It's possible that the comments are still up on the article. If so, go read and grieve for our nation.
It almost makes me want to give up. Why fight for our freedom, when so few of us want it?

You may think I'm over-reacting to a few random comments. But the signs are everywhere. Every time someone says "there ought to be a law...", and I hear it and similar statements more and more frequently these days, they are giving over responsibility for their own actions (and with it their freedom) to the government.

Do Americans really despise their freedom so much that they will exchange it for illusions of security and the chance for a few unearned creature comforts?

Do we even as a nation know what freedom means?

Perhaps we have forgotten how to live, and thus have forgotten to value the ability to order one's life as one pleases.

At any rate, it seems that the daily loss of our freedoms is accompanied not by outrage (except by a few), or action, but instead occurs:

" ...to thunderous applause."

-()4|<.

Did Rome resist falling? Or beg for it?

So as anyone informed enough to be reading this is no doubt aware of by now, the global warming energy bill has narrowly made it through the house. This is basically the equivalent of voting to steer the Titanic towards another iceberg after the first collision, on the grounds that this one will plug the hole left by the last one.

Democrats narrowly passed historic climate and energy legislation Friday evening that would transform the country’s economy and industrial landscape.

Oh yes. They will be transformed. Flip back through our archives to a few months ago, and you'll see an article about the decay of Detroit, and how the wild is creeping back in. Our industry is packing up and moving to China. Don't blame the Chinese; industry is no longer welcome here.

“It has been an incredible six months, to go from a point where no one believed we could pass this legislation to a point now where we can begin to say that we are going to send president Obama to Copenhagen in December as the leader of the of the world on climate change,” said Markey, referring to world climate talks scheduled this winter.

A great honor, to be sure. Attempting to stake the heart of your country's infrastructure in exchange for a chance to sit at the table with the cool kids is clearly a win-win scenario for Democrats.

Ayn Rand simply called these type of people "looters", and she was right in that respect. We had achieved unparalleled prosperity and standards of living, NOT by wealth hoarded at the expense of other nations, but by CREATING wealth. Now, with barely contained excitement, they inform us that our standards of living are going to fall. ("Finally!", they sigh. "These canaglia... the rabble who need us, they have lived like fattened calves for too long. We, the elite, the inheritors of the age of enlightenment, should be given the money, to spend as it ought to be spent. The rest should live as the rest of the world lives.")

Know this. Those who now guide our country's progress hate America's success, as they hate all success that allows decent people to live in prosperity and order their own lives as they see fit.
If they must bring this entire nation to its knees in order to gain total control over your lives, they will do so. It could be rather quickly inferred that this is exactly what is going on.

Now they have succeeded in passing "the largest tax increase in American history under the guise of climate change", in the words of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.).

The ins and outs of the mythology of green energy and job creation are straightforward enough (the bottom line: this legislation is going to hurt nearly everything it touches...), and we can outline those in another entry.

Right now, I am curious to hear any reactions you may have. I feel as if this great ship of state has been hijacked by enemies far more dangerous than any external terrorist threat.

Terrorists would be no more a national threat to a strong, free America than horseflies on a summer day at the pool. But in this weakened, divided, apologetic America, that publishes to the terrorists its interrogation techniques and does their PR work for them in advance, that cannot seem to rebuild what they destroy, or even muster the cultural strength to displace the radical culture which spawned them, to an America that now gives away its freedom to men who promise security and peace if only, if only we will let them make our decisions for us, in that America, the terrorists do not even need to "win". America as she has been is rapidly ceasing to exist, and what America is becoming will be no threat to evil.

Rome did not fall at the hands of the barbarians who sacked her, Rome fell from within.
The barbarians merely knocked over the tottering, decaying structure whose time had passed.

-()4|<.

We have a Spaceport?

There is plenty of distressing news today, but I am ignoring all of that and focusing on the rather cool item: New Mexico's commercial spaceport is now in the process of construction.

The $198 million project, which is being funded by the New Mexico state government, is located on a remote high-desert range near the town of Truth or Consequences.

British tycoon Richard Branson's space tours firm, Virgin Galactic, will use the facility to propel tourists into suborbital space at a cost of $200,000 a ride.

"After all of the hard work to get this project off the ground, it is gratifying to see Spaceport America finally become a reality," Richardson said.

For all of us who grew up hearing about how the future would be (and that includes most of us, I assume), and imagining what it would be like based on those far-ranging predictions (and that includes many of us as well) then proceeded to observe the future arrive and look rather familiar, things like this are highly gratifying. It's not a flying car, but hey, a spaceport is a spaceport.

And unlike green industry, the space industry will likely be highly profitable...

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said the firm already had taken some 300 advanced bookings and planned to begin flights from the spaceport within two years.

There are plenty of people with enough money to go into space (sub-orbital space, that is), and if it can be demonstrated to be safe and reliable, it may become the adult "must do at least once" item, a la Disneyworld for kids. At a gathering of the wealthy, someone might mention their Spanish villa, or yacht, but all attention will be commanded by the one who asks "but have you been into space?"

Will we really live in a world where space commutes to Asia or Europe will become routine?

It's a toss-up.

We have repeatedly demonstrated in the West that we don't care about making more power/energy available, and would rather saddle ourselves with oppressive environmental legislation and leave advancement to other parts of the world. Finding the extra energy in our system to power space flights just isn't going to happen, we must build more power-generating sources, be they nuclear power plants, or oil wells in Alaska. We can shift things around on the grid enough to cover black-outs on an unusually hot summer day, but not to cover the amount of energy that this industry is going to require. If we're fortunate/blessed, our energy capabilities will finally be expanded to cover this innovative new industry.

And that leads me to the other point, which is this:
New movements, both social and technological, have rarely been based logically on improvements in existing paradigms.
The internet, and associated information technology, captured the imagination of a generation, and they pushed that beyond all expected limits to fundamentally change we way we live and the world works, in only a few years.
Despite energy shortages, massive server farms have popped up, with their own hydro-electric power plants. Despite everyone already not having time, suddenly massive amounts of it were found available to spend (at the expense of other activities, granted) checking email, surfing randomly, and checking personal networking sites. Everything changed, not slowly as a result of gradual technology improvements, but as a result of the information revolution.

If we are ever to reach the Space Age, that every child who grew up in our generation knew was coming someday, it must be similar. Entrepreneurs and visionaries must emerge who can capture both imagination and funding. The New Mexico spaceport provides a sandbox (in the creative sense) in which they can begin to do this.

Obama has already signaled that he will not give space research a priority during his administration, but as his popularity inevitably begins to fall, it's likely that he will turn to such things to both shift focus away from unpopular socialist policies, and associate himself with popular, forward-looking ideas to boost his image.

We shall see. In the meantime, welcome Spaceport America.

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And... we're back!

Greetings all. Following a dearth of posting in the past several weeks, we should be kicking things back into gear here within the month, with a return to frequent posting no later than the end of the month. Call it a summer break.

And speaking of summer, it seems that this summer of our American discontent has been made glorious (or at least more interesting) by a massive Rightward swing in Europe.

This was an inevitability. Europe had to shift politically, or cease existence entirely, but I admit I had assumed a relatively slow and painful process of the later.
And the mechanism by which the switch occurred is interesting as well.
With socialists and liberals proclaiming the ongoing financial disaster as proof that capitalism has failed, (rather like saying that a flu outbreak is proof that doctors are useless) many expected socialists to clinch their control over Europe. I was one of these, and assumed that failed socialist policies would lead most of Europe through a weakening decline until the Great Muslim Demographic shift came into play and transferred several EU member states into the Dar al-Islam.

Not yet, however. The article linked above describes the damage to the entrenched socialist power structures of Europe as follows:

Left-wing incumbents in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and of course Britain were either slaughtered, or badly mauled.

It also mentions that the comparatively right-wing incumbents of France and Italy did just fine.

As to the cause of this unexpected rout, further investigation would be worthwhile.

The article puts it down to two root causes:

It is not clear why a chunk of the blue-collar working base has swung almost overnight from Left to Right, but clearly we are seeing the delayed detonation of two political time-bombs: rising unemployment and the growth of immigrant enclaves that resist assimilation.

Ah yes, the immigrant enclaves. Much has been made in the US of a growing percentage of Latin Americans changing the balance of some political debates -abortion, for example, as Mexicans tend to be staunchly pro-life- and more of this will undoubtedly be seen as the demographics continue to shift. Less commonly, however, have I heard discussions of how Europe's demographic shift will affect politics there.
(Discussion of looming cultural shifts, yes; of political reorganizations, not so much.)

Could this be one of the first major rumblings of a new era in Europe?
Or is it instead merely the fallout from the global economic turmoil taking an unexpected route?

Time will tell. Meanwhile, though the left-leaning members of our government have long idolized Europe, something tells me this latest shift will go unadored...

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