As a conflagration destroys homes, dreams, and lives, many liberals are mourning the loss of innocent trees.
Now before liberals get indignant and think that this is another attempt to indict an entire ideology for a tragedy, I would like to make a confession. You are right. Yet, so am I. I am absolutely blaming liberalism for this tragedy. I have no qualms about blaming people when it is their fault.
This tragedy also affected Sierra Nevada, but since that story was so eloquently written by www.mpinkeyes.wordpress.com, this column will only address Lake Tahoe, California.
Also, for the least sensitive of the leftists out there who wish to blame the people in Lake Tahoe for living near areas vulnerable to fire, I hope they remember that line of thought when Hollywood liberal homes in Malibu face floods.
Liberals did not start the fires themselves. That was an act of God, or for many on the left, Gaia, goddess of the Earth. What the liberals did was destroy beautiful homes the way they destroy virtually everything else beautiful in their path…with excessive government regulation.
Bill O’Reilly interviewed a citizen who was lucky enough to have the only home in the entire neighborhood survive the fires. The fellow explained that the fire spread through the brush, which in many cases was only 10 feet from many homes. There were environmental regulations in place that prevented people from clearing brush more than 30 feet from the homes. These homes were tinderboxes waiting to explode, and the inevitable fireball was ignited, razing homes with no mercy.
The lucky homeowner defied the environmental regulations, clearing brush up to 50 feet from his home. His home is still standing.
Many liberals wonder why I take such scorched Earth tactics in dealing with their philosophies and ideologies. The answer is because scorched Earth is exactly what Lake Tahoe has turned into, all because saving trees was deemed more important than human beings. This is not an isolated thought pattern.
In Oregon, the left cares about the Spotted Owl. Timber companies are harassed to protect this creature. I am not minimizing creatures big or small, but does anyone on the left understand that corporations consist of people? All we hear about in the media is wealthy CEOs, stock options, golden parachutes, and greed. What about workers? Those are the people that the left claims to fight for. How does shutting down timber companies and placing innocent workers on the unemployment line so that they cannot feed their families help society? Trees are important, but so is lumber. Should we ban people from ever using pencils and paper ever again? If not, trees sometimes have to become lumber.
Animals and trees are not as important as human beings. This fundamental difference in conservative and liberal ideologies is what separates freedom from tyranny. Directly between life and the pursuit of happiness is liberty. As the brilliant philosopher John Locke stated, “Liberty is property.”
The right to be free is the right to live in one’s home in peace. The home is the castle. The right to protect the home is why people are allowed to own guns, which the liberals are against. It is the right to protect our family and keep them safe, which is why conservatives favor school choice and home schooling. It is why we do not like people holding signs saying “Bong hits 4 Jesus” outside schools. It is about a fundamental right to feel protected. This is difficult to do when an entire group of people simply does not value human life as paramount.
For those on the left who claim that the right exploits tragedies for political gain, I point out to the left that we prefer these tragedies never occur. This is not about left versus right. It is about right versus wrong.
Everything in this world flows from doing what is right. What is right is allowing people to clear brush from their homes so that their American dreams do not go up in all consuming flames ever again.
eric
A waste is a waste is a waste. But these folks chose to live there knowing the circumstances. I’m not talking about the circumstances of potential fire danger, I’m talking about political decisions making it impossible to reduce the fire danger to property. If they didn’t know, they should have if only to protect their investment.
The people living in the Tahoe area should have come together to change stupid laws that were endangering their property. If they didn’t they have no one to blame but themselves. But I suspect they were mesmerized by the beauty of the area and just rolled the dice. When you do that, sometimes you lose.
I watched Oreilly yesterday too , and you got it dead on.
If more people treated this country like there own home Ill bet that fence would go up real quick too.
By the way ,tree’s grow back ,so will the brush.
I also saw a documentary on NG proving how forest fires are essential to new growth.
When trees cast out sunlight it prevents the seeds they drop from germinating.
Think about it. When has the left ever demonstrated concern for what works?
I learned about the dangers of uncleared underbrush to forrest habitats from my liberal college proffesors 30 years ago. Did liberals really push the 30 feet maximun law, or was it just some government beaurocrats anxious to exercise their authority?
I also wanted to pick a nit about the Spotted Owl thing. The political Right has inaccurately re-defined the Spotted Owl issue as being all about saving Spotted Owls. It’s not and never was. It is about saving Old Growth Forrests. The Spotted Owl habitat is typically Old Growth Forrests. Since Owls are at the top of their food chain, they act as an indicator species for the whole ecosystem. A canary in the coal mine. If the canary dies, there’s poison in the mine. If the Spotted Owl population dwindles, there is probably danger to the entire Old Growth Forrest ecosystem.
So, it’s not about a preference between Spotted Owls and Humans. It’s also not about Old Growth Forrests and Humans. If it was, any sane person would side with the Humans. Some will try to portray is as a preference between Old Growth Forrest and the Timber Industry. The timber industry can still harvest new growth forrests and be profitable, just not as profitable. So if the preference is between having Old Growth Forrests or cheaper header beams, I’ll take the forrests please. Thank You.
Yea but the liberals will try to scare you into voting for them and their measures by warming up the global warming issue along with the old growth thing. Neither is really a problem ,yet.
If Al Gore announces that he is going to run ,I think that will put into qustion his sincerity about global warming. Is he just warming us up for the big announcement ?
Is this installed fear going to be part of his platform ?
He wiil be pitching how we shouldnt cut down anything , I can hear it now.
Sorry, but I’m not buying the old-growth forest idea. I live in Alaska where we have millions and millions of acres of old-growth forest. For 40 years we suppressed forest fires because Smokey said we should. About 15 years ago, spruce bark beetles infested the Kenai peninsula. Spruce bark beetles eat old-grown white spruce. The foresters and entimologists said the solution was to control-burn or log the northern Kenai before the beetles made it to the mainland of Alaska. Well, the environmentalists screamed. White spruce is old-growth. It’s the preiminent species. You can’t kill it!
Well, we did nothing and the beetles spread north. They’re now all the way into the Interior. Vast acres of white spruce are standing dead. Last few years, nasty forest fires have nearly destroyed a couple of towns. We lost the economic value of logging those beautiful, but doomed trees. We’re building houses out of new-growth weed trees. Those houses won’t last 20 years. (Doug, when your header beams need replacing and they condemn your house, remember this blog; it’s not about cheap, it’s about durability). But, hey, we have a lot of dead old-growth trees standing around us. Whoooh! Yeah, ain’t they lovely?
It sounds like such a noble idea, but we fail to recognize history. The Native Americans regularly fired the forests of the Lower 48 to keep down underbrush and prevent big fires that killed the animals and wiped out Indian communities. IIt also served to control bug infestations. Instead of learning from them, we silly white people suppressed forest fires and now are paying the price of 50 years of fuel that shouldn’t be there and elderly trees that are just ripe for a bug-munch. Logging those trees would have accomplished the same thing as fire without all the smog.
Just a thought!
also when the tears flow over katrina and the new orleans debacle….its funny how they pick and choose….
you’re blog rolled
Also, corporations are the reason that USA is such an advanced country in the first place. People fail to understand that only corporations have resources and incentives of free market to achieve anything substantial.
Why USA got the man on the moon? Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, computer engineering and electronics corporations.
Who invents drugs that prolong our life and health? Pharmaceutical corporations.
Who invented computer operating systems and software used all over the world? Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Sun Microsystems, IBM.
List goes on and on and on…..
Everything that we take for granted was made by corporations, and could be made only by corporations.
Look at Russia, my home country – the country rich with intellect and resources, poor clean corporate tradition. WHAT HAVE RUSSIANS INVENTED IN PAST 30 YEARS?
Nothing.
No Russian “Toyota”, no Russian “Microsoft”, no Russian “Merck”. Nothing.
Corporations, driven by free market, seek to make money, which inevitably means, create useful products. Without them, USA will become big American Soviet Union – poor, desperate, hopeless. Liberals should move to Russia and see for themselves – to real Russia, not Muscovy.
-armilnov
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency: A bi-state agency conceived in the 1960s by Republican Govs. Ronald Reagan of California and Paul Laxalt of Nevada. The TRPA was created by an Act of Congress and President Nixon and charged with the lofty goal of preserving a national treasure and its fragile environment.
Do you still think Liberals are to blame?
I’l bet its the liberals that didnt cut back their brush. The point being made is that common sense prevailed in this mans case, He trimmed his brush further than allowed by law and he still has his house. This goes to independent thinking.
He didnt act like a bunch of lemmings on fire at the edge of a cliff.
Which is what I would categorise as liberal thinking.
The unfortunates that lost there houses were probably worried about losing their grass. Which I would categorise as liberal thinking.