While Rand denounces the mystics of religion, she equally defames the mystics of muscle, the communists, the strong-men, the tyrants, and “intellectuals” who are somehow smart and privileged enough to negate the incredible benefits of free will and individual rights which the founders of our nation struggled so desperately, yet so successfully, to establish.

For a religionist such as myself, my take is that one must not be afraid of the truth. One must ask the questions of life, and seek their answers through whatever means they have available to them. While Rand discounts the spiritual, I choose not to, and so incorporate my own spiritual understanding into my decision-making process. For me, religion is a means by which man may progress in capability and virtue, and if any particular faith fails in this test, I should be inclined to seek out another.

This is my choice, and I will defend my right to make that choice, for myself, and for my family, and for every other citizen of my great state and my great nation, at all costs. In agreement with Rand, I too believe that free will and with it, the zenith of human achievement, cannot be preserved without a moral compass, viz. a clear delineation of good and evil.

What is good, and what is evil? Ask yourself this question with no reservations toward discovering the truth, and see for yourself where it leads…

“Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the finest Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me…” — Bernays, recalling a dinner at his home in 1933.

If one can accept the posit that society is nothing more than the sum total of all individual exchanges that take place within it, then one could also acknowledge that it is the preservation of the mechanics of the process of exchange in general, and not the objects of any one transaction, which should be the focus of a just and equitable government.

To wit, a fair exchange can only result when all parties involved gain some net benefit. Any system of government that violates this basic principle, whether on the basis of race, creed, religion, or ideology, no matter the justification, no matter the rationalization, no matter the platitudes, is unjust.

Such injustice, unchecked, leads only to oppression and corruption. In such a society, there is little incentive to hold oneself accountable to contractual obligations, little incentive to innovate, little incentive to do anything more than gain power over others.

Taking is not Economic Justice, forcing is not Social Justice, and Human Rights come from within, and from above. They can never come from the government, for He who gives, so too, can take away.

We know we are free men. Let us begin to act on this knowledge.

In the word of Martin King:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”"

“A system of theocratic government need not be founded on one of the great historical religions of the world. It may be the outcome of metaphysical tenets which reject all traditional churches and denominations and take pride in emphasizing their antitheistic and antimetaphysical character. In our time the most powerful theocratic parties are opposed to Christianity and to all other religions which evolved from Jewish monotheism.

What characterizes them as theocratic is their craving to organize the earthly affairs of mankind according to the contents of a complex of ideas whose validity cannot be demonstrated by reasoning. They pretend that their leaders are blessed by a knowledge inaccessible to the rest of mankind and contrary to the ideas maintained by those to whom the charisma is denied.

The charismatic leaders have been entrusted by a mystical higher power with the office of managing the affairs of erring mankind. They alone are enlightened; all other people are either blind and deaf or malefactors”.

Al Gore as a leader blessed with knowledge of certain and imminent doom…

The ridiculing of all their religions besides their own, and their inept attempts to latch onto “science”…

Their denial of raw data to “denier” scientists, the hijacking of the peer review process,  and the utterly vapid argument, “the science is settled”…

We the People have a right to a small and efficient federal government which will provide the necessities of defense and international relations while at the same time preserving the conditions necessary for individual liberty. Anything the federal government takes upon itself beyond those powers specified in the Constitution will lead to corruption.

If you desire the feds to have more power than this, the only authorized means is to amend the Constitution to ensure that your social program accurately reflects the will of the People. Otherwise, such powers and programs are left, rightly so, to the discretion of the individual States.

The time now fast approaches, where finally the “unproductive” will begin to be culled from the deserving and intelligent factions of American society. Look for it tonight, at the State of the Union.

Nobel Prize winning “Scientist”, Dr Murari Lal states that his 2007 research for the UN’s IPCC “did not rest on peer reviewed scientific research”, but “It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.”

So the only conclusion I can reach is that, as of late, the Nobel Prize has been awarded almost exclusively to Liars and/or Incompetents.

This American Thinker article documents quite clearly the nature of the controversy revealed in the Climategate emails and data. CRU at East Anglia University which is the primary contributor to the UN’s climate change report, has actively tried to suppress dissenting opinions of other scientists by abusing the peer review and journal publication process.

Well, I just came across this bit in a textbook I’m currently reading “Anticipating Surprise” by Cynthia Grabo, and I think it encapsulates very well what is going on in the AGW community when dealing with the recent cooling trend:

“For warning, we rarely need to be concerned about the “idea whose time has come.” It is the fate of the idea whose time has not yet come – the hypotheses which is in its infancy and has yet to gain adherents – that should most concern us. There is indifference to new ideas; long-held opinions are extremely slow to change except in the face of some extra-ordinary development or unambiguous evidence. This is true even when the issues are not important. When the matter is exceptionally important and the new judgment is unpopular or contrary to going national policy, indifference to new ideas or hypotheses may change to outright hostility. The warning system must insure that this does not happen and that the hypotheses and ideas are given “equal time” on the basis of their merits, no matter how unpopular or contrary to prevailing opinion they may be.”

While this is relating to a problem in the intelligence community, which often has to make wide ranging predictions in spite of a high degree of uncertainty, the attitude of dismissing any information which does not fit certain theories, and sweeping alternative hypotheses under the rug entirely, has become the norm in the AGW community. The problem is that the scientific method DEMANDS that all alternatives be considered, and all data considered in terms of their applicability to multiple hypotheses. The Climategate scandal at CRU shows how far the AGW “scientists” have departed from this basic principle.

When I state that the CRU “scientists” are anything but, it is not just a play on words. Just as we hold physicians to the Hippocratic oath, and retract their license to practice when they violate it, esp. in cases where they are actively working against it, so too should scientists be held to all tenets of the scientific method, to include providing all the data and techniques they used to arrive at their conclusions, as well as addressing all valid hypotheses regardless of their origin.

When the CRU team took steps to circumvent the impartiality of the peer review process and colluded with the editor of a scientific journal to in their attempt to undermine any impact the DCPS study referenced in the AT article might have had, they were actively working against the scientific method and allowing their unrestricted bias to dictate their actions.

Adherence to the scientific method is the apriori condition to all productive scientific endeavors, and so, regardless of the conclusions reached by CRU’s studies which have been incorporated in the IPCC report, if we have reason to believe that CRU staff were operating far outside the bounds established by the scientific method, then both the data and techniques they used to reach their conclusions must also be questioned.

The fact that other institutions reached the same conclusions as CRU is NOT a reason to dismiss Climategate as irrelevant, but is just the opposite. If they are exhibiting similar behavior, and have produced similar results, then that warrants further detailed investigation, and a fresh approach to the whole question in general.

Expunge the CRU reports from the IPCC, remove the “scientist” zealots from their posts of prominence in the realm of climatology, and conduct open studies which incorporate accurate, unquestioned data and openly available methodologies, to include the source code for all the computer models which have figured so prominently in this debate, sans any “fudge” factors.

Otherwise, you have all the makings of a very bad religion…

With Health Care history calling, and Cap and Trade soon to follow, Thomas Paine’s “The Crisis” comes to mind…

December 23, 1776

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.”

…

“Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but “show your faith by your works,” that God may bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”