As a matter of fact, it is in the name of the environment that they have made some of their greatest gains. And the danger is that the Left feeds on itself. Each new tax they pass is immediately followed by a loonier tax proposal. And now, onerous and asinine taxes such the decades old gas-guzzler tax on the big cars we love to drive and the proposed windfall profits tax on the oil companies that provide the fuel for those cars are being “one-upped” by the Left’s “unofficial” pursuit of a flatulence tax.

That’s right, the Left wants to tax cow and pig flatulence as a way to “regulate” the emission of greenhouse gases (Michael Savage couldn’t have been more correct in his assertion that “liberalism is a mental disorder”).

Writing for the Business & Media Institute in December 2008, Jeff Poor cited evidence in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” report that demonstrates the EPA is open to the idea of levying “a tax on livestock.” More specifically, they are open to the idea of taxing livestock flatulence.

According to Poor’s research: “The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle. The tax on hogs would upwards of $20 per hog…[and] any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits” to continue doing business.

Of course, the Left has been quick to denounce the possibility that this “unofficial” tax proposal will ever really be enacted, but that’s their M.O. (and it is exactly what they said about many of the taxes we’ve now simply grown accustomed to paying annually). They often tell us not to worry in order to keep us from investigating the ramifications of their agenda.

But anyone who takes the time to go to www.epa.gov will see that the EPA seems to have taken the possibility of this tax seriously enough to work out it’s ramifications for us. And the EPA clearly states that this tax would bring “numerous farming operations that currently are not subject to the costly and time-consuming Title V permitting process [under the Clean Air Act] would, for the first time, become covered entities.”

Therefore, in classic class-warfare form, the same Left that tells us not to take this “unofficial” tax proposal seriously also promises that if passed, it will only be aimed at large (read “greedy”) farms, feed-yards, or dairy facilities that excessively contribute to global warming via their large number of cows or pigs. But if we read between the lines, and trust what Rush Limbaugh calls “knowledge guided by experience,” it doesn’t take long to see that we’re being sold a bill of goods here folks.

Just consider this: We told that in order to be liable for the tax, were it implemented, a farm, a feed-yard, or a dairy facility would have to produce a 100 tons of greenhouse emissions a year (www.epa.gov). But the use of “100 tons” is misleading because it distorts how easily the threshold for the tax could be met.

The easiest way to understand how many small farms and livestock operations would fall prey to this tax is to consider that 100 tons of greenhouse emissions can easily be produced by “dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn.” Moreover, were this tax passed, such “small” operations would possibly be required “to get a Title V permit” – which is the permit to operate under the auspices of the Clean Air Act.

By the way, did I forget to mention that it costs approximately $100,000 to acquire a Title V permit? Actually, according to Thomas Sullivan, Small Business Administration’s Chief Council of Advocacy, by the time the late 1990s rolled around the process of getting a Title V permit exceeded $100,000 once “the cost of hiring consultants and technical personnel [was] considered.”

On the top of the Title V expenses there would be the actual taxes on flatulence and an additional fee of approximately $32 per ton for greenhouse emissions (http://www.epa.gov/air/oaqps/permits/fees.html). That means, if you were “wealthy” enough to have 26 dairy cows your initial bill would be approximately $107,750 (26 cows at $175 a cow, plus 100 tons of greenhouse emissions at $32 a ton, plus $100,000 for the Title V permit).

How much will it cost us in freedom and dollars to learn the simple lesson that
European Union President Vaclav Klaus has been trying to teach anyone who will listen to him or read his books? The “crisis mentality” attached to global warming is the only aspect of global warming which is demonstrably manmade, and it is now being pressed upon us to a freedom-robbing degree unfathomable since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The same kooks who floated the idea of this flatulence tax (pardon the pun), are telling us not worry about it becoming a reality too soon, but we need to be sure they know that if it is ever enacted it will be too soon for people who treasure liberty.

We must say “yes” to freedom by saying “no” to the assaults upon it, which are continually launched under the guise of environmentalism.

That this is so is not just common sense, although common sense should suffice. The effects of high tax rates upon a people’s charitable spirit has been seen again and again by free market economists and historians who look honestly enough at history to see that low tax rates spur generosity while excruciating rates close otherwise open purses.

A long time ago, the mid-300s B.C. to be exact, Aristotle began writing portions of what became one of his most famous works – Politics. Here, Aristotle actually warned against egalitarian, “spread the wealth” politics embodied in men like Obama and Joe Biden. He contended that seeking equality in economic outcome for everyone across the board could only result in “the destruction of the state,” as “the state is not made up only of so many men, but [of so many] different kinds of men.”

The truthfulness of this is evident to any honest inquirer. For our nation, our “state,” is comprised not simply of men with differing abilities and various degrees of skill and training, but also of some men who work for a living and others who are not ashamed to spend all day in bed, waiting for a government check to arrive in the mail so they can live at the expense of those who do work for a living.

Because of this variation of skill and motivation among the population, Aristotle also argued that one of the greatest difficulties faced by a nation operating under democratic electoral principles is finding a way “to prevent the poor from plundering the rich.” He understood that a state which adopts policies that allow the lower or middle class to live on the backs of the upper class is a state which has agreed to its own execution. Currently, in the U.S., leftist policies “spare” 35% of our population the burden of paying federal income taxes. Is it not fair to say that the people who comprise that large percentage are plundering those who do pay taxes? And Obama wants to increase the plunder.

Moreover, according to Aristotle, this situation tends to a greater number of people going on the dole because “everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill.” In other words, once a man gets past the initial shame of living off the labor of another man he loses what little ambition that remains, and becomes accustomed to relying on the motivation, ambition, and labor of others.

Aristotle recognized that a nation that overtaxes its upper class places even the property of that class at risk. And this couldn’t be clearer than when we consider that the wealth the upper class produces is their property; a property our government takes away through Obama-like tax policies. Thus, the 50% tax bracket which the Obama campaign proposes for those making over $250,000 has as its ultimate end the taking of the property of one class in order to disperse it among the open hands of other classes.

In such a setting Aristotle warned that “no one, when men have all things in common, will any longer set an example of liberality or do any liberal action.” i.e., charity will cease when property ownership comes under attack. An Obama-like redistribution of property places a palpable tension between the classes that wasn’t there prior to such strong handed government intrusion.

While psychologist John Rosemond’s observation that “entitlements…always breed contempt for those who pay the bills” was proven true in the aftermath of the millions of dollars sent to ungrateful Katrina victims, Aristotle’s warning about a decline in generosity will prove true as well if Obama wins the election and succeeds in instituting his proposed tax policies.

Ultimately, Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around” is just going to put an end to charity.

As this nation was being birthed, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed,” and Patrick Henry that “the great objective is that every man be armed.” Yet instead of recognizing the wisdom of these words and abiding by them, we have largely remained idle amidst the emergence of public areas in our society where firearms are declared off limits. This has translated into providing armed predators with unarmed people upon whom to prey.

Nowhere has the foolishness of these “gun free” areas been more evident than in our public schools. In 1990, the Gun-free School Zones Act was passed by President George H.W. Bush, only to be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It was resurrected by President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s, and by 1996 a broader version of it was in place as the law of the land. (Ironically, it was at this same time that shootings in public schools became a broader problem as well.)

Everybody remembers the shootings at Columbine on April 20, 1999. Fourteen students and a teacher were killed, and twenty-three others were wounded. But the fifteen deaths at Columbine are only a small portion of the approximately sixty people who have died as a result of shootings in our public schools since 1996. Such a ridiculously high death toll should force even the most ardent anti-gun Democrat to recognize that “gun free” zones do no more to keep the criminally minded student from bringing guns to school than laws against burglary keep thieves from breaking into homes. At least the Heller decision confirmed our right to have guns in our homes with which to repel thieves and the like, but all we have done about people who shoot other people at school is to continue to guarantee them unarmed victims through asinine restrictions on law-abiding citizens.

Throughout my time as a student in the university, these restrictions took away my right to have a gun with me for protection even though I have a concealed carry license. And I vividly remember how vulnerable I felt after the Virginia Tech shooting in April, 2007, when 33 students were killed by a disgruntled student. I knew my fellow students and I were literally sitting ducks; men denied the right to self defense by liberals who trust in the “basic good” of humanity for their safety. (They fail to understand that the only time criminals are “basically good” is when the threat they face for committing a crime is as bad, or worse, than the threat they pose to their would-be victims.)

Fortunately, Harold ISD Superintendent David Thweatt is tired of this, and is taking the path that the late Charlton Heston was jeered for championing following Columbine. He wants teachers in his school to carry guns with which to protect their own lives and the lives of their students. According to Thweatt: “If something were to happen [at Harold]…I’d much rather be calling a parent to tell them that their child is OK because we were able to protect them.”

Thweatt came to this decision after evaluating school gun policies like those Clinton implemented. “When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that’s when all of these shootings started,” he said. Simply put, he recognized that maintaining a “no guns allowed” policy for his faculty would amount to nothing less than giving would-be “assailants” a tremendous advantage. “We cannot control the environment unless we have something to defend ourselves with,” he said.

As one would expect, liberal blogs have already begun to post their predictions that a bloodbath “like Columbine” will result from Harold ISD’s decision. However, I believe we can take solace in the fact that those predicting the “bloodbath” are the same people who predicted Reagan would lose the Cold War, Iraq would be another Vietnam, and John Kerry would win the 2004 presidential election.

As usual, the liberals never like to let the facts get in the way of a political position they’ve grown accustomed to holding. Were they open to facts, there is much they could learn about improving school gun policies from the shooting on the Virginia Tech campus. For instance, according to Fox News Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano, on the day of the shootings six students in the very classrooms the killer entered “had guns in their autos or at home” – guns they could have had with them at school to use in defense of their fellow students and professors. Of the six, Napolitano said, “all had been licensed and trained in the use of guns.” Things could have gone much better for innocent people and much worse for the killer at Virginia Tech had the school allowed law-abiding, licensed students and professors to have their guns with them in the classroom.

This was not lost on Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has made it clear that he has no intention of intervening to prevent the arming of Harold ISD’s faculty, as long as the teachers who wish to carry a gun get a concealed carry license to do so. Moreover, Perry is supporting a bill being pushed by the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus which, if passed in January 2009, will allow college students with concealed carry licenses to keep their handguns on their persons on college campuses in Texas.

It was Reagan who said: “There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power.” This is the path we’ve foolishly followed for security in our schools up till now, as we have reacted to every shooting by giving the government more power to keep law-abiding citizens from defending themselves. But Thweatt is changing this, and it is refreshing to see that he recognizes that the “security” Democrats offer via “gun free” zones is nothing less than a façade which all too often costs innocent students and faculty members their lives. May this wise and rational man’s decision to arm the faculty at Harold ISD remind us all of the importance our Founder’s placed on personal responsibility, the value of human life, and the irreplaceable benefits of an armed citizenry.

We pride ourselves in our “education.” We take comfort in the “advances” we have made over those who went before us and mock the “backwardness” of our ancestors, even of those white landowners who signed the Declaration of Independence. Ironically, those white landowners of the late 18th century were probably far better educated that we are in the early 21st. For instance, while some of us know how to clean a gun, our Founders knew not only that but also how to make a gun. And while all of us know what cigars and cigarettes are, the Founding Fathers in Virginia and the Carolinas could have taught us how to plant, grow, and harvest tobacco. They could have explained the proper type of barns to construct in order to allow harvested tobacco to cure correctly. Thereafter, they could have explained the different grades of cured tobacco and how combinations of differing grades in cigarettes would provide varying flavors.

This knowledge would not have been esoteric in the Founder’s generations as it is in ours; broad sweeps of the population would have been familiar with it. The amount of knowledge they stored in their minds was simply vast compared to ours.

In his book, “Knowledge and Decisions,” Thomas Sowell illustrates the greater knowledge stores of our ancestors by positing a modern, “civilized man,” suddenly dropped into a jungle: “Although the civilized man might be a well educated individual, working in complex profession…it is doubtful whether his knowledge would be sufficient to merely sustain life in an environment where primitive peoples have lived for untold generations.”

Sowell’s point should cause us to think of the untamed environment into which our forefathers and Founders entered when they came to this continent. Regardless of the professions they had held in Europe, upon arriving here they also demonstrated the additional, priceless knowledge of survival. Moreover, their knowledge was so well rounded that they and we, their posterity, have been able to thrive rather than “merely sustain life.”

In addition to establishing civilization in an untamed land, our Founders understood and dwelt upon the value the freedom. They esteemed it of greater worth than their own lives, as demonstrated by their pledge of their “lives” to its cause in the final sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Thus, although Jefferson thought about indoor plumbing, philosophy, and agriculture, among other things, the output of his pen indicates that he spent far more time considering the beauty of liberty. And Jefferson, a product of the Enlightenment in many ways, knew that the liberty of his posterity depended upon their habits of thought and their ability to think. Therefore he wrote: “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the day of day.”

What Jefferson opined with these words was the simple fact that thought, well practiced, is the enemy of tyranny. And the corollary to this is simple: The death of thought is the birth of tyranny. When we refuse to use our minds we are asking someone else to use theirs in place of ours. This is tantamount to asking them to look out for us, or to protect us, or to reign over us. And reign they will.

In “The Conservative Mind,” Russell Kirk touched upon this in describing how despots will arise to control our behavior if we prove incapable of controlling it ourselves. His point was that the less control we exercise over the self from within, the more others will exercise control over us from without. This brings President John Adams famous quote about morality to mind: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In other words, just as our Founders knew that “a free people ought to be an armed people” they also knew that only a moral people could be free.
The morality of which Adams wrote requires us to think about our actions, weighing not simply consequences of certain endeavors but foundational questions of right and wrong as well.

Until we decide to think again, we cannot be surprised that millions of Americans will continue to disrespect our military – How can they respect those fighting for a freedom that is not understood? We also cannot allow ourselves to be surprised that America will move closer and closer to a socialist state – A myriad of laws from without will be passed to make up for the loss of control from within. And we cannot be disheartened by the raw ignorance college student’s display concerning our nation’s heritage – Why should they esteem what their parents undervalue?

I have thought of these things again and again as I watch the seeming mindless march of hundreds of thousands of Barrack Obama supporters. Ask any of them what he stands for and the answer is the same – “change.” Ask them what kind of “change” and they will either stare at you with that blank look that betrays the fact that they’ve never thought about it or retort, “Man, it’s his turn; it’s our turn.” The real answer is far simpler – they are not thinking, and that’s why they support Obama; a man who has no respect for our military and a soft spot of socialism.

Recently, in a speech to his adoring fans, Obama said he didn’t look like the other presidents whose faces are on our money. He said this because he is black and they were white. And his goal was to shame John McCain and other Republicans into backing off from their criticism of his policies. But his statement made me think about how correct he was in one way – he is nothing like our Founders. They loved freedom, he hates it. They loved capitalism, he wants a socialist state. They fought Britain to the death; he wants to make the U.S. more European. They loved guns, and viewed them as befitting companions of free people; he opposes concealed carry laws and private gun ownership.

Perhaps in time, more of us will come to the realization that the cessation of thought opens the door for every oppressive demagogue slick enough to step in, and we will reverse the trend. Until then, men like Obama actually have a fighting chance in what would otherwise be a grand slam for McCain. If Obama wins the election, we must remember that through our refusal to think and encourage thought in others we have become our own worst enemy.