...and green is the new red...
If you can follow that train of logic, then you can see why I am leaving the blog green for a while. If you can't follow that train (or if your train derailed), allow me to elaborate:
Oregon is usually considered to be a "blue" state. I want to make it RED. And that isn't as far fetched as it seems. Back in 2000, GWB lost this state by a far narrower margin than Kevin Mannix lost in the 2002 Governor's race.
In 2000, Bush really should not have won. Don't get me wrong: I am pleased with the outcome; I just believe that Gore blew it more than Bush won it.
Gore was the sitting VP, under a popular (albeit corrupt) President, in a time of relative peace and prosperity. His resume as a Representative, Senator, and Vice President gave him a lot of credibility. His war record, dubious though it was, still looked better to most than W's service in the Guard. And all the experts kept reminding us that Gore was more intellectual, a better communicator, and could pronounce the word "nuclear" correctly.
Still, Gore lost. Worse, forgetting all about Nader, the Supreme Court, Florida, and Katherine Harris, Gore lost his own home state and (like his predecessor), failed to carry a true majority of the popular vote.
Why?
BECAUSE THE NATION IS TRENDING CONSERVATIVE, AND THE PEOPLE REJECT LIBERAL IDEALS.
Sure, you can point to Bush's low popularity in the polls. But take that with a grain of salt: for one thing, the polls are highly stacked against the President (with a combination of push-poll questions and demographic weighting); second, many of the "negative" respondents are hard core conservatives dissatisfied with Bush (over record spending, failure to live up to promises like a defense of marriage amendment, etc.). If you add up the people who support the President and the unhappy folks who want a more conservative Commander-in-Chief, you get a solid majority.
Even in Oregon.
After all, for a "blue" state, we sure did get some solid majority wins on ballot measures like "one man, one woman." Doesn't sound very "progressive," does it?
So I believe that the right conservative Republican, one who can satisfy the principles of the far-right while at the same personally connecting to the moderate center, can pull off a big win here.
Blue is the new Red.
However... that whole color thing is sort of a mistake...
Why do we call Republican states "red" when, for years, red was associated with Soviet Russia and Communist China? It all goes back to an old election where a crummy (but popular) newspaper decided to start printing everything in color, instead of the usual black and white. They produced an electoral map, and arbitrarily chose red and blue to designate Republicans and democRats. Somehow, it caught on.
But many of us still continue to associate red with the international communist movement. And that is where the "green is the new red" comes in...
As Holly Swanson spells out, many of the leaders, organizers, and financiers of the modern environmental "green" movement are the stalwart communists who have been seeking the downfall of our capitalist western democratic civilization for several generations. The Soviet Union may have collapsed and the Berlin Wall torn down, but that is just a setback for these American fifth-columnist revolutionaries. They learned that they can't win on an openly Marxist platform, so they have adapted themselves to appeal to our emotions: everyone wants a clean world, right?
Seriously, read the book:
Well, like I said, we all want a cleaner world, right? I don't know about you, but I like clean air. In the words of Foghorn Leghorn, "my lungs crave air!" But what separates me from the "green" movement? Simple:
I do not believe that we must impede capitalism in order to save the world. Indeed, I believe that we must EMBRACE capitalism in order to save the world.
The great thing about American capitalism is that it allows the most efficient solutions to problems to come forward. No other nation has produced as many life-improving innovations as America. From medicines to satellites to computers to aircraft to superconductors, no other nation has provided so much to the world. We didn't do it with government control of industry. We did it because we have fewer burdens on innovation, fewer obstacles in the way of achievement.
You want to make the world cleaner? Get the government out of the way!
Government obstacles have taken away any incentive for power companies to produce newer, more efficient power plants. Because of idiotic regulation, it is better for a power company to allow an outdated, pollution emitting system to remain on-line long past its useful lifetime than it is for the power company to build a better power plant.
Don't even get me started on nuclear power (perhaps the only thing France has done right)...
Plastics, which result in more pollution and more fossil fuel depletion than wood and paper products, have taken over in light industry. Why? It's not because plastics are inherently cheaper and better. It's because timber regulation has artificially raised the cost of paper and wood products (which cause less pollution and are naturally renewable) to the point where it makes more sense for manufacturers to covert as much as possible over to plastic.
By the way, when industry uses paper and wood products, American loggers make money and keep that money in America. But when we switch to plastics, we subsidize foreign oil companies. You know, the people who we won't allow to run our ports because we are afraid of terrorism...
What happens when you allow a free market system to force companies to continuously improve their production methods in order to lower prices? You know, traditional competition?
You reduce waste. Waste costs money. And pollution is waste.
The more efficient a company becomes as a result of reducing costs to beat the competition, the less pollution is produced. Free market competition leads to less pollution. Regulation defeats this objective in two ways: it creates artificial costs that make more efficient methods more expensive, and it stymies technological innovation. Why invest in a better way to do business if the government is going to add artificial costs to your improvement? Why risk your capital developing new technologies if government regulation is going to reduce your bottom line?
The more the government tries to control industry in an attempt to save the environment, the less industry can do to save the environment.
And here is the problem we conservative Republicans face: we allow the green movement to label us an anti-environment, when the more accurate statement is that they are anti-capitalist.
Again, I like clean air. I like clean water. And, to be brutally honest, I can't think of a single conservative Republican who thinks otherwise. In fact, that conservative Republican candidate for Governor I like so much, Jason Atkinson, is an avid fly-fisherman who probably cares more about clean water than anyone else running for office.
But we allow ourselves to be held hostage by an environmental movement by letting them control the terms of the debate. We say "let's get the government out of the way of industry" and they say "Bush wants to put arsenic in your drinking water." We say "let's not burden ourselves by signing on to the ineffective Kyoto protocols," and they say "Bush is causing global warming."
Don't even get me started on the whole global warming canard...
So I say we take the language back from the lying anti-Americans out to destroy capitalism.
I am going GREEN because I like clean air and clean water, and I believe the best way to achieve it is to elect REPUBLICANS who will cut the bureaucracy and allow free market innovations to lead us into the new millennium. I encourage all stout-hearted right-wingers to embrace the color green.
Green is the new red, and red is the new blue. Kick a democRat out of office to make the world a cleaner, healthier place.
As such, the blog stays green. Enjoy the new look.
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