An act has recently been passed with overwhelming support from both parties,  and quietly signed by the president, that empowers secret service agents to disallow free speech in “zones” designated arbitrarily by them where they are present.

Under the new law, any political protest in a public place could be forbidden.

Defiance will be treated as a felony.

Judge Andrew Napolitano points out in this video that the law is an abridgment of the First Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees free speech.

(Hat tip reader and commenter Frank.)

The USSR and it satellites, the entire region of the world that lay beyond the Berlin Wall, was one vast prison house until 1991. Nobody – except the tyrants who kept the keys – could leave it at will.

Now there is a plan to let the US government stop Americans leaving their country if the state hasn’t extracted all the money it considers itself entitled to first.

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

The Republican House of Representatives may soon follow the Democratic Senate and give the IRS the power to confiscate your passport on mere suspicion of owing taxes.

There’s no place like home, comrade.

If it is true that the Republicans are seriously thinking of passing this measure, then we cannot be confident that a Republican victory in November will restore the liberties America has lost under the disastrous rule of the Democrats, or even safeguard those Americans still have.

“America, Love It Or Leave It” might be an obsolete slogan if the “bipartisan transportation bill” that just passed the Senate is approved by the House and becomes law. Contained within the suspiciously titled “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act” or “MAP 21”, is a provision that gives the Internal Revenue Service the power to keep U.S. citizens from leaving the country if it finds that they owe $50,000 or more in unpaid taxes — no court ruling necessary.

It is hard to imagine any law more reminiscent of the Soviet Union that America toppled, or its Eastern Bloc slave satellites.

In his 1967 CBS “Town Meeting of the World” debate with Bobby Kennedy, Ronald Reagan declared, “We don’t want the Berlin Wall knocked down so that it’s easier to get at the throats of the East Germans. We just think that a wall that is put up to confine people, and keep them within their own country instead of allowing them the freedom of world travel, has to be somehow wrong.”

Throughout the many decades of the 20th century’s Cold War, the freedom of movement Americans enjoyed as a cherished right was one of our secret weapons. As the Communists in Moscow promised the world utopia out of the barrel of a gun, people around the globe noticed that the Soviets needed walls and barbed wire fences to keep their people in, while in the U.S. walls were as pointless as a fish’s bicycle.

Q: What induces Americans to give up their citizenship and live forever in Foreign Parts?

A: As long as they’re citizens or permanent residents, wherever they live they have to pay US taxes.

Overtaxation has led to 1,800 Americans living abroad renouncing their U.S. citizenship last year or turning in their green cards — many of them with broken hearts because of their love for this nation. The record number of former U.S. citizens is nearly eight times more than those who renounced U.S. citizenship in 2008, and it exceeded 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.

1,800 is not a lot. But the prevailing principle that any citizen or permanent resident is free to leave, is a vital part of what makes most of them want to stay. A law keeping people in may well have the opposite effect, and cause far more to venture reluctantly out into the wretched Abroad.

What do students learn at American universities these days?

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) California division has produced a report titled “A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California.”

Its important finding is that the majority of teachers at the University of California, being biased to the left, indoctrinate rather than teach; and what they indoctrinate is pro-collectivist anti-American leftism.

We have reason to believe – judging by experience, and information gathered over many years – that this deplorable state of affairs is true of most of the universities of the Western world.

Larry Elder writes about the report at Townhall:

California taxpayers spend $2.8 billion to educate the more than 230,000 students at the 10 campuses that comprise the UC [University of California] system. But the report says the UC system does not help students learn how to think, but rather teaches them what to think.

And what they “learn” is that they are victims – whether of racism, sexism, classism or discrimination because of sexual orientation. Liberal profs, says the report, turn the UC campuses into “a sanctuary for a narrow ideological segment of the spectrum of social and political ideas.”

Nationwide, left-wing professors vastly outnumber conservative professors in the humanities. It isn’t even close.

The report cites several studies, including political scientist Stanley Rothman’s 1999 study: “Whether the question was posed in terms of liberals versus conservatives or Democrats versus Republicans, the margins favored the former by nearly 5-to-1 in each case, and in some departments the results were overwhelming. For example, in English departments the margin was 88-to-3, and in politics 81-to-2.”

A different 2007 study, says the report, found the 5-to-1 margin between liberal versus conservative professors had become 8-to-1. Almost 20 percent of professors in social sciences and 25 percent of sociology professors self-identifies as “Marxist.”

And things are getting worse. Younger professors tend to be even more liberal than older ones. Among UC Berkeley’s associate and assistant professors, according to one study, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by 49-to-1 in all departments – including sciences. When Berkeley associates and assistants replace the older professors as they retire, the extreme 8-to-1 tilt in favor of liberal profession could reach 50-to-1.

The 87-page report looked at course descriptions, books assigned, faculty’s political party registration and self-identification of ideology, and student feedback.

Students are immersed in an education that emphasizes the wrongs done to minorities, women, gays and other groups. Gender, ethnic, religious and sexual orientation grievances are highlighted as representative of an imperial, racist, exploitative capitalist superpower that continues to engage in widespread racism, sexism, homophobia and worldwide domination.

“We wuz wronged” takes center stage over a basic understanding of economics, of the concept of federalism, and of the values that turned a struggling bunch of colonies into a political and economic superpower. Indeed, the very mission statements of many departments on UC campuses stress their commitment to activism for enacting social change, or to bring about social or racial or fill-in-the-blank justice.

Take the UC Berkeley history course that majors in that field must take, “The United States from Settlement to the Civil War.” Its course description states its goals: “to understand how democratic political institutions emerged in the United States in this period in the context of an economy that depended on slave labor and violent land acquisition.”

A conservative professor — if there were any — might offer an alternative version of American history: The British colonies defied the mightiest world power by demanding and then fighting for political and religious freedom. They conceived a radical document, the United States Constitution, born out of armed revolution, where for the first time in human history, the new, imperfect country said: “The people rule. Through our Constitution, which we have amended to ensure equal rights of blacks and women, we grant our government limited, non-intrusive powers. The rest is left to the people and to the states.”

Why does this matter?

After all, students expect professors to give opinions. Surely students aren’t potted plants, and can a) read about other points of view and b) freely disagree with professors without fear of classroom ridicule or lower exam grades.

But the report says many students complain that alternative viewpoints are discouraged, scorned or dismissed, sometimes derisively. Students’ complaints to administrators are ignored.

And this is from PJ Media by Zombie:

A devastating new report issued by the National Association of Scholars …  documented with exquisite and irrefutable detail the extreme liberal bias at the University of California. However, the main problem with the NAS report … is that it’s too overwhelming and too technical to deliver the kind of emotional impact needed to sway public opinion. To drive home the point in a more personal way, the NAS report needed an introductory companion anecdote of a professor frankly confessing the rationale behind what is essentially the “theory of indoctrination.” … Professor Brown stepped into that role, unwitting though he may have been.

Let it be noted that Professor H. Douglas Brown is no wild-eyed extremist; in fact, he’s rather bland and respectable and not the most thrilling of speakers, as you will soon hear. But that’s what made his presentation so disturbing: radical and self-admittedly “subversive” attitudes that affect the future of society are discussed with matter-of-fact nonchalance. The main drawback of Professor Brown’s verbal style (at least from my point of view) is that he often resorts to the academics’ tried-and-true escape hatch, which is to rephrase statements as questions, so as to have plausible deniability if later confronted. Thus, for example, instead of just flatly saying something like “We should indoctrinate students with leftist ideologies,” he asks “Should we indoctrinate students with leftist ideologies?” and only after five minutes of talking in circles eventually concludes “Yes.”

Read the rest of this illuminating article here.

Again Pat Condell speaks for us. Inter alia, he faults atheists who cloud their clarity of thought with leftist political correctness.

Although this video is not new (it dates from August 2010), its message is still very much to the point: for freedom, against religion –  especially Islam.

Lars Hedegaard, President of the Danish Free Press Society, accused of racism for saying that Muslims maltreat their women, was found guilty of “hate speech” on May 3, 2011.

He said at that time:

My crime is to have called attention to the horrific conditions of Muslim women and for my audacity the court has now enabled my detractors to label me a racist.

Muslims can say whatever they want with impunity. Just a few weeks ago Denmark opened its gates to the hate-spewing preacher Bilal Philips, known for his advocacy of wife-beating and the killing of homosexuals. He was provided a platform in Copenhagen and nobody thought of dragging him into court.

Our authorities and their allies among the pc elites have chosen sides in the struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of darkness and so opted for the oppressors of their own people and against those deserving of their protection.

The real victims of this despicable case are freedom of speech and the tens of thousands of girls and women – Muslim as well as non-Muslim – whose plight may no longer be mentioned in my country for fear of legal prosecution and public denigration.

We cannot permit this outcome to stand. I have therefore decided to appeal my conviction to the Supreme Court and – if that is denied – to the European Court of Human Rights.

This is a fight for liberty against tyranny. It will be long and hard but losing is no option.

On Friday, April 13, 2012, his appeal against his conviction was heard by the Danish Supreme Court.

This is what he said (translation taken from FrontPage):

Honourable Supreme Court,

My attorney has presented juridical arguments to the effect that I must be acquitted and I shall refrain from elaborating.

However, allow me to express my quiet bafflement that somebody can claim that it has been my intention to accuse every last Muslim father in the world of abusing his children – particularly in light of the fact that I have carefully explained that it was never my intention to disseminate such an absurd contention.

For precisely that reason, I would have welcomed an opportunity to review the statements I now stand accused of having uttered before they were placed on the Internet. If the interviewer had fulfilled this basic journalistic obligation, I would have demanded that my remarks be corrected so as to reflect my true opinions and the prosecutor could have saved the trouble of dragging me through the courts.

I am even more baffled at one of the claims about my person that has been circulated in connection with this case, namely that I am a racist. I have never been, I am not now and I shall never be a racist. On the contrary, all my life I have opposed racist attitudes, by which I mean hatred towards and denigrating speech about people due their descent, skin color or other so-called racial characteristics – in other words, antipathy against or ill treatment of people due to circumstances over which they have no control.

Islam is not a race and therefore criticism of Islam cannot be racism.

Islam, which lurks behind this entire case, has been described from a variety of viewpoints. Some say that it is a religion, others that is an all-encompassing ideology that contains a religion, still others emphasize its cultural norms, its culturally transmitted customs and practices. Some even maintain that Islam is so multifaceted that it is impossible to describe it.

But regardless of one’s approach, it must be clear that Islam is not a hereditary human attribute.

If our Western freedom means anything at all, we must insist that every grown-up person is responsible for his or her beliefs, opinions, culture, habits and actions.

We enjoy political freedom and we enjoy freedom of religion. This implies a largely unlimited right to disseminate one’s political persuasion and religious beliefs. That is as it should be. But the price we all have to pay for this freedom is that others have a right to criticise our politics, our religion and our culture.

Islamic spokesmen have the freedom to advocate their concept of society, which implies the introduction of a theocracy governed by god-given laws, i.e. sharia, the abolition of man-made laws and by implication freedom of expression and democracy. They are free to think that women are inferior to men as concerns their rights and their pursuit of happiness. They are even entitled to disseminate such opinions.

I cannot recall a single instance in this country where an Islamic spokesman has been prosecuted for saying that sharia will become the law of the land once the demographic and political realities make it possible. This despite the fact that we have several examples of imams who have openly declared that the imposition of theocracy is a religious duty incumbent on all believers.

In return, these theocrats and sharia-advocates must accept the right of those who believe in democracy, free institutions and human equality to criticism Islam and to oppose its dissemination and the atavistic cultural norms practiced by some Muslims.

It is this right – I would even say duty – to describe, criticise and oppose a totalitarian ideology that I have tried to exercise to the best of my ability.

My speech and my writings have had no other purpose than to alert my fellow citizens to the danger inherent in the Islamic concept of the state and the law.

I have made no secret of the fact that I consider this fight for our liberties to be the most important political struggle of our time.

I would not be able to live with my guilty conscience if – out of fear of public condemnation and ridicule – I refrained from telling the truth as I see it.

And regardless of the outcome of this trial, I intend to continue my struggle for free speech and against totalitarian concepts of any stripe.

If the court rules against Lars Hedegaard, it will be a ruling against freedom – tantamount to a death sentence on Western civilization.

*

Update April 23, 2012:

From the Gatestone Institute:

Lars Hedegaard, the president of the Danish Free Press Society, has been acquitted by the Danish Supreme Court on charges of “hate speech” for critical comments he made about Islam.

The verdict, however represents only a partial victory for free speech in a Europe that is being stifled by politically correct restrictions on free speech, particularly on issues related to Islam.

Although Hedegaard was acquitted, it was on a legal technicality; in its ruling, the Supreme Court stressed that the substance of the charges against Hedegaard — public criticism of Islam, — is still a crime punishable by imprisonment.

That America is a melting-pot of ethnicities is one of the causes of its greatness. We only wish that everyone in this great federal Republic would become color-blind, for the worth of a person has nothing whatsoever to do with his skin color.

Racism will be gone from American public life only when no man or woman or child is chosen either for advantage or disadvantage because of the color of his or her skin.

The Democratic Party wishes differently. It persists in its profound dedication to judging people according to their race.

One of the few politicians we admire is Rep. Allen West, who recently did the country a favor by pointing out how many Communists there are in Congress. He was fiercely attacked by Democrats for – what? Inaccuracy? No. For having anti-left opinions while being black!

Derek Hunter writes at Townhall:

This is about how progressives continue to exploit race to keep us divided as a people and to manipulate voters.

This is about Rep. Allen West, R-Fla.

He loves his country, he’s a former military man, and he’s a black conservative. In other words, he drives progressives crazy. The only way they could hate him more is if he were a self-made millionaire or a married woman who carried a baby to term.

This week … asked if there were any communists in Congress, he said yes, as many as 80. You’ll know them, he said, because they are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)….

Aside from what they call themselves, not much differentiates CPC members from communists on policy matters, but West clearly was joking.

Joking in that he said it light-heartedly, but not kidding.

The Left was not amused. …

The outrage cascaded. Martin Bashir, the idiotic MSNBC host with a British accent (it’s the only way to differentiate hosts on that network since they’re all interchangeable, mindless Lego pieces) called the congressman “Joseph McCarthy” …

A much maligned man, Joseph McCarthy.

A spokesman for the Communist Party USA told Politico, “I just think it’s an absurd way to cast a shadow over his colleagues. It’s kind of a sad ploy … guilt by association, taken to an extreme.”

As someone who works in word, I couldn’t help but notice his comment infers there is an association and some guilt to be gleaned … but I digress….

The real criticism came from the black gossip site “Bossip.” Putting aside the weirdness behind the need for race-based websites on gossip or anything else, the staff at Bossip pulled the leftists’ favorite arrow from their quiver and called West an “Uncle Tom” and a “house slave”, both for his comments and for disagreeing with President Obama.

It’s quite common for black conservatives to endure such comments from liberals when they dare to think for themselves. And it’s equally common for the media to ignore such slurs.

That’s because most Leftists are racists, though not the traditional type you see in movies. Their beloved progressive movement was founded by noted racists and supporters of eugenics. They’ve known this all along. But now, they’ve realized they have to hide it.

There’s little difference between judging someone to be inferior to you based on skin color, and assuming they’re inferior because they don’t vote how you expect them to. That’s not to mention the racism involved in telling people they can’t succeed on their own, society is stacked against them so they shouldn’t even try. Telling them they need government’s help, doled out by Democrats exceedingly generous with other peoples’ money, just to get by. Or attacking successful people because, despite their skin color, they view the path to success differently.

Yet these are things in which progressives routinely engage. Even President Obama talks about the “unfairness” of America yet ignores the fact his own life story completely discredits his argument.

Americans used to celebrate success, regardless of race. We admired independence and self-reliance. We thought it better for people to thrive on their own than to survive on government handouts.

But the road to independence is paved with hard work and aspiration, and liberalism wants nothing of that. The generational death-spiral of government dependence has not led anyone out of poverty, but it has created reliably Democrat cities, districts and states – in other words: reliable voters.

The irony is that many liberals think they’re actually doing good for the people they’ve ensnared in poverty. …

You’d think all Americans would celebrate the life of a poor black child raised by his grandparents who worked his way up the ladder to the Supreme Court of the United States. Nothing is more “American” than that. But Clarence Thomas doesn’t subscribe to the notion government handouts are the only path from poverty. Therefore, he is despised and called unspeakable things by people who tell us to celebrate diversity. Because, to progressives, diversity means different colors but like minds – drones who think what they’re told.

Assuming things about a person based on their race is racist, even if it’s your own race. Hurling slurs and seeking to inspire hatred of someone because they don’t conform to your racist assumptions is disgusting. It’s also the cornerstone of the modern progressive ideology.

It may indeed be called that with good reason.

But the foundation stone on which “progressivism” – or call it Socialism, or Communism – is built, is the most terrible of all beliefs: that the individual must be sacrificed for the sake of the collective. Thinking of people in terms of the herd, counting individuals as items of the herd, is the way to tyranny, the road to serfdom.

Like racists, slavers, rapists, pimps and pornographers, collectivists treat people as things. But of all the things in the universe, a human being is least a thing.

Much that the environmentalists do goes beyond common sense, but this goes beyond sanity.

Thomas Cloud reports at CNSNews:

The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.

“In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. “The plant’s location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge. The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010,” the Interior Department reported.

The bush — a Franciscan manzanita — was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.” …

On Oct. 16, 2009, Dr. Daniel Gluesenkamp, a botanist who was then the director of Habitat Protection and Restoration for Audubon Canyon Ranch, noticed the manzanita when he was driving along Doyle Drive. … The manzanita had been previously hidden by other vegetation but was uncovered as the area was being cleared in preparation for road construction.

With help from a biologist from the Presidio Trust … and an ecologist from the National Park Service, Gluesenkamp’s discovery was determined to be a Franciscan manzanita.

Shortly thereafter, the Presidio Trust, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the California Department of Fish and Game developed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for saving this one bush from the highway project … 

The agreement of Dec. 21, 2009 – Memorandum of Agreement Regarding Planning, Development, and Implementation of the Conservation Plan for Franciscan Manzanita – explains how, why, and when the bush would be moved and which agencies would be responsible for which aspects of the move.

While the MOA did not detail all the costs for moving the bush, it did state that in addition to funding removal and transportation of the Franciscan manzanita, Caltrans agreed to transfer $79,470 to the Presidio Trust “to fund the establishment, nurturing, and monitoring of the Mother Plant in its new location for a period not to exceed ten (10) years following relocation and two (2) years for salvaged rooted layers and cuttings according to the activities outlined in the Conservation Plan.”

Furthermore, …  the “hard removal”—n.b. actually digging up the plant, putting it on a truck, driving it somewhere else and replanting it–cost $100,000.

The MOA also stated that Caltrans agreed to “Transfer $25,605.00 to the Trust to fund the costs of reporting requirements of the initial 10-year period as outlined in the Conservation Plan.”

The $100,000 to pay for the “hard removal,” the $79,470 to pay for the “establishment, nurturing and monitoring” of the plant for a decade after its “hard removal,” and the $25,605 to cover the “reporting requirements” for the decade after the “hard removal,” equaled a total cost of $205,075 for “translocating” this manzanita bush.

But those were not the only costs incurred by taxpayers on behalf of the bush. According to the MOA, other costs included:

–“Contract for and provide funding not to exceed $7,025.00 for initial genetic or chromosomal testing of the Mother Plant by a qualified expert to be selected at Caltrans’ sole discretion.”

–“Contract for and fund the input, guidance, and advice of a qualified Manzanita expert on an as-needed basis to support the tending of the Mother Plant for a period not to exceed five (5) years, provided that said expert selection, retention and replacement at any point after hiring rests in the sole discretion of Caltrans.”

“Provide funding not to exceed $5,000.00 to each of 3 botanical gardens (Strybing, UC, and Tilden) to nurture salvaged rooted layers and to monitor and report findings as outlined in the Conservation Plan.”

–“Provide funding not to exceed $1,500.00 for the long-term seed storage of 300 seeds collected around the Mother Plant in November 2009 as outlined in the Conservation Plan.”

The plant is now protected by a fence and its location is kept secret, in part because the Presidio Trust and the National Park Service fear that nature-lovers seeking to see the rare wild Manzanita might trample it to death.

“[A] single trampling event could result in damage or the death of the wild plant,” the Interior Department noted in the Federal Register for Sept. 8, 2011. “As noted …, the Presidio Trust and NPS have made continuous efforts not to reveal the location of Arctostaphylos franciscana. They are concerned that public knowledge of the A. franciscana location would attract large numbers of plant enthusiasts who may damage the A. franciscana and compact the soil.” …

One California nursery currently allows customer to purchase Franciscan manzanitas online for $15.98 per bush. Another sells them for $18.00 per bush.

Earth-worship has been revived.

Now the fashionable religion of the unintelligent intelligentsia, it is  very ancient, very primitive.

The worship of the earth-goddess, Gaia, Isis, Terra Mater … (she had many names), came even before the worship of the moon-goddess, Luna, Diana, Selene, Artemis …

Daniel Greenfield writes, with scorn, but more in sorrow than in anger:

While conventional religion has been on the decline in the modern world, there is a devoutly held belief system … a faith propounded from newstands and newscasts, its proclamations of doom and grace are all around us. It is the green faith.

When all supernatural and unseen entities are banished from the pseudo-rational mind, only one force remains as the source of all life. Earth. Or Gaia, the mother of all life, whose eponymous hypothesis postulated that the planet was a single organism. In the absence of all deities, the planet itself became the deity. Its natural harmony is the way and those who live artificial lives are the sinners.

Harmony with the planet’s creative force is the mark of good people. Those striving to live natural lives. The jet setting nomads who recognize no border or nationality, whose trust fund investments are as global as their enthusiasm about the brotherhood of man. On the other is the farmer who struggles to wrest the natural world to his own ends, the builder who is always creating new structures and products.

Righteousness is measured by the size of one’s “carbon footprint”, a vow of technological poverty, usually sworn by the well-off on behalf of the badly off who unlike them are required to live by it. The ideal is to live as harmoniously with the mother goddess as possible, either through deprivation or complex schemes for juggling resources or carbon credits. These acts of outward piety serve as sacrifices by the faithful to the planet.

The mother goddess is in pain, we are told, crying out because we are harming her, raising temperatures, flooding islands and bringing storms. If we do not relent, she will destroy us. It is up to the faithful who have the special knowledge and who are attuned to her plight, to save mankind from the apocalypse that we have brought on ourselves with our sinful ways.

The EPA in the United States acts as the religious police, protecting the mother-goddess from the blasphemous abuses of the infidels. It is above the law and evidence because it is a religious body and not subject to such secular concerns. But its minions are only the enforcers of a vast international community of faith which is convinced that the doom of mankind is at hand and spends every minute calculating the day when the oceans will rise up and sweep man off the earth for his sins against the planet.

Environmental scientists have become inquisitioners, searching out heresy, denouncing it and destroying the reputations and academic positions of the heretics. The media and the entertainment industry have wholly dedicated themselves to the propagation of the faith …

World leaders are often among the first to adopt a new faith, and the leaders of the modern world are much more likely to kneel at the green altar than they are to hold conventional religious beliefs. The green faith provides them with a revolutionary role as the agents of change, impoverishing their own people, while lining their pockets and those of their friends. It is their kind of religion.

International covenants subscribing to the doctrines of this new faith have already been signed, binding each nation to the ranks of the green. Enforcement bodies have been empowered to protect the planet from the scourge of technology and educational programs have been embedded in every school in the modern world to inculcate children with the tenets of the faith and their responsibilities to the mother goddess.

It is a misnomer to say that the modern world is atheistic. It does have atheists, but they are not the majority anywhere.

More’s the pity! But give us time.

For the most part everyone believes in something, even if it’s only in the redeeming power of carbon credits and recycling. In a unified ecosystem that makes us brother to the whale, and child of the ape –

Not to disagree with his general drift, we butt in here to murmur: well, we are that, are we not? Not brother to the whale, but child of the ape, or at least of a common ancestor –

–  a harmonious environment which we moderns have disrupted with factories, jet planes and nuclear reactors.

The idealization of the environment is not a new phenomenon, it is among the most ancient of faiths. When thunderstorms struck, many of the ancients believed that the sky was angry at them, and we in our skyscrapers notice a warm month and eagerly point out to one another that our sins have made the planet grow hotter. The Romans would have laughed at us, the Greeks would have hooted, but the barbarian would have understood exactly what we were talking about. Like the pseudo-sophisticates, he would not have needed any more evidence than a proclamation by a wise man with sufficient juju.

Without knowing it, without realizing it, our societies have become barbaric in mores and in mindset.

Modern American and European elites congratulate themselves on their superiority to their 19th century ancestors, when in reality that are their intellectual and moral inferiors, sitting on a throne of technolog[ical] and military accomplishments built for them by the ancestors they dismiss as backward.

People have a basic need to believe things. They need to believe that they came from somewhere and that their lives have purpose.

But some of us accept gladly that we came from that ape-like ancestor, and we set our own purposes.

They need to believe that there is a higher force –

We know there are many higher forces – including the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. What we don’t know is why many believe in a divine higher force. But we don’t mean to carp. We agree with almost everything Greenfield has said so far.

–  a struggle between good and evil, in which they can play a part. …

The earth is tangible in a way that the older beings that man believed in are not. It is the touchstone of all pagan faiths because it is physically present. And that physical presence can then be cloaked in all sorts of mummery as a rock hurtling through space becomes the mother goddess of all life. When all other faiths have been dismissed by the high priests of the altimeter, it is the primitive source that they return to.

He goes on to discusse science as a belief system, and the “science” that supports the green religion:

But of course science is a wholly different thing from religion. This we all know. Science, we are told, is based on facts, while religion is based on faith. But every religion at its peak has insisted that it was the proven truth. Its esoteric proofs were incomprehensible to the laity, but they were there. And only a fool or a lunatic would disbelieve them. Intelligent people knew that the truth was the truth. As intelligent people know today that it is absolutely ridiculous not to believe the thing that some of the experts tell them they should believe.

The difference between the two rests in the ability to challenge a consensus based on proof, rather than in finding proof to support an existing consensus. Any intelligent person can do the latter, it is why debates on any given subject, no matter how trivial, can continue endlessly. It is not intelligence that sets the scientist apart, but integrity. And the green faith has repeatedly demonstrated how little integrity it has and how willing it is to put its beliefs ahead of the science.

This is not a new phenomenon, in or out of science. Human beings need to believe things, and the scientific method is a hedge against that weakness. But the only true defense against it is character, a commitment to the truth apart from any other beliefs. But how can one ask people to set aside their belief in the doom of mankind, the billions of dollars invested in preventing that doom and the moral transformation of society that can be achieved by leveraging that doom.

The Global Warming debate asks researchers to choose between their science and their religion, their pocketbook and their reputation. It is a miracle that there are any who have not fallen along with the procession to the green altar. It is hard to blame those who have.

Much as we respect the pocketbook, we don’t find it hard to blame the betrayers of science at all.

After that Greenfield becomes rather obscure (here’s the link again for those who want to hear him out).

He ends with this, speaking of course not for us – us atheists and himself – but for them:

When we have nothing else to trust in, all that remains is the green, the natural renewal of the world, the primitive cycles of the seasons and the degeneracy of man into a savage who is at one with the mother goddess of the world.

From PJ Media:

Steven Hayward writes at Powerline about a French intellectual, Pascal Bruckner, who explains why  –

… apocalyptic fear has gripped so many of our leaders, scientists and intellectuals … You’ll get what you’ve got coming! That is the death wish that our misanthropes address to us. These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering if we have the presumption to refuse to listen to them.

Catastrophe is not their fear but their joy. …

It is the paradox of open societies that they seem to be disordered … threatened by crime, loneliness, and drugs because they display their indignity before the whole world, never ceasing to admit their defects, whereas other, more oppressive societies seem harmonious because the press and the opposition are muzzled. “Where there are no visible conflicts, there is no freedom,” Montesquieu said. Democracies are by their nature uneasy, they never realize their ideal; they necessarily disappoint us, creating a gap between the hope they elicit and the realities they construct.

Freedom is messy, and messiness is fecund. Only where there is freedom do great things grow.