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Your pet's carbon footprint is bigger than my SUV's?

According to authors, Robert and Brenda Vale, your pet dog leaves a footprint bigger than an SUV. Their book, Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, lays out a good argument and raises some questions and maybe some dander. In a country where Green living is becoming politically correct, how far will people go to be "green"? Will this change how most view pet ownership? Should it?

You can read more about it in the New Scientist.

About global warming

It's true we should be good stewards of the earth. We should make efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses, conserve energy, be less wasteful. Because those are good things to do. We should learn moderation. But, how do you feel about legislation based primarily on what seems to be a one-sided argument? And what do we do with stories like this that carry a different set of facts regarding global warming?

The Liberal Glacier

The Washington Post published a succinct article written by George Will several years ago titled, A Case for Conservatism. What a pity the article was not picked up by the McCain operation and used in his campaign because the conservative message was not adequately articulated. Though Sarah Palin energized the base in spades, McCain needed to draw more democrats further to the center and center right, which clearly did not happen.

By today's "everything is relative" standards John F. Kennedy was a conservative. But the relative speak worth espousing here is the relative distance of the new president elect  from the principles of JFK.

Two of many defining values JFK advocated were that Americans should 1. Serve a cause bigger than themselves e.g. don't ask the government what it can do for you, and 2. Americans should not be considered on the basis of race, religion etc. Yet those two values have been turned upside down and twisted by his party today. The Dems have redefined "ask not" and "affirmative action" which, ironically he coined.

What a conundrum that liberal politicians reject values, which JFK embraced yet portray an alliance with him. George Will hit the proverbial nail when he wrote that, "You serve your country by embracing a spacious and expanding sphere of life for which your country is not responsible".

But, the Dems embrace ideology which partly rests on the premise that everything must be fair. That fallacy has to some degree permeated the independent and conservative base and feeds the entitlement mentality. Everything is not fair, nor can or will be because fairness is not an entitlement. It's a tall order to distribute fairness. How is it that any party should have such hubris to proclaim it should be administrators of it? Furthermore, it is evident where a party's values lie when it implies spreading wealth is the epitome of fairness. It is repulsive to debase Americans with such poppycock. Some liberals are redefining the values JFK supported.

George Will nailed the arguments as one of freedom versus equality. It may be an over simplification to assert that if you are more concerned about freedom than equality, you are more conservative than liberal. But, it might be an easy way to gauge where you are on the political spectrum. Americans have an intrinsic level of equality just being American. To some extent equality already exists.

From the liberal perspective, if someone competes in a business and does not succeed, it is likely due to inequality rather than general skills, abilities or capitalization. Or if a certain individual belongs to an ethnic group and his business fails, liberals want to  blame it on polarization--a magnification of the plight of his "people". If affirmative action perks isn't the crutch to balance the playing field, perhaps an entitlement is because those who fail are disenfranchised. The disenfranchised needing entitlements become a going concern for communities and eventually Americans at large.

The notion Americans cannot achieve success without the necessity of a government handout or hand up is slowly blotting out the legacy of the founding fathers who argued whether the federal government should provide for the common defense. If liberals somehow provide equality they will have to do so at the expense of the outcome. As with any competition someone will do better, and since the criteria liberals use for inequality is one of outcome, they will not be satisfied until there no longer is competition and socialism reigns supreme. Conservatives need to illuminate the base and Americans if they hope to push back the slow deliberate liberal glacier.