Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Playing Out Our Absurd National Debates at the Local Level: The Case of Fracking
The American Thinker ^ | May 4, 2012 | R.B.A. Muccio

Posted on 05/04/2012 1:13:38 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

I originally sought election to the school board of the community where I live for many reasons. I grew up there, I spent my entire public school career in the district, and I care a great deal about its future. I also have four young children in the school and want to make sure they get the best education possible. Three years in, I like to think I've been able to do some real good in these respects.

But the experience has also afforded me the opportunity to help play out many of our national debates on a local level. The board routinely decides on issues related to public education, and since education touches so many other matters, we also act on a host of broader topics: debt,taxes and spending, church and state, health care, etc.

I live in WesternPennsylvania, which is a boom area for Marcellus shale and a hotbed for the "fracking"debate. And now, because of the geological quirks that have situated many Pennsylvania school districts upon vast reserves of natural gas, school boards have become "dramatis personæ" in the national debate over energy. Our board recently voted to approve a gas drilling lease that will give us a bonus amounting to about 1.3 percent of our total budget and 18percent royalties on gross revenues for many years...this while barring all surface activity on our property. To a large majority of board members, this seemed like a reasonable course, all things considered.

Yet the debate brought out all of the predictable trappings of the divide between liberals and not-liberals that we have come to expect. The good news is that the fracking issue, as we've dealt with it in our local school district, helps explain why it is so hard for conservatives and liberals to find common ground.....

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: economy; energy; globalwarming; green
It's a great story and illustrates so nicely who really is anti-science, close minded and hypocritical. Be sure to read the last couple of paragraphs to enjoy how it ended.
1 posted on 05/04/2012 1:13:47 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Cincinatus' Wife

The leftists have taken it as granted that burning fossil fuels is a Bad Thing for the earth. This is why their high horses.


2 posted on 05/04/2012 1:56:54 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Away with them and the high horses they rode in on.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cincinatus' Wife

The leftists have taken it as granted that burning fossil fuels is a Bad Thing for the earth. This is why their high horses.


3 posted on 05/04/2012 1:56:59 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Away with them and the high horses they rode in on.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: HiTech RedNeck
The more vocal "warmers" do know "climate change" is really about growing government and social control.

Lying climate scientists lie again – about death threats, this time

4 posted on 05/04/2012 2:00:58 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Cincinatus' Wife

10 non threats and 1 vague hint. And they go scurrying off into their bunkers.


5 posted on 05/04/2012 2:02:37 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Away with them and the high horses they rode in on.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: HiTech RedNeck
10 non threats and 1 vague hint. And they go scurrying off into their bunkers.

[2000]....."But they are lying.......

The first truth about leftist missionaries, about believing progressives, is that they are liars. But they are not liars in the ordinary way, which is to say by choice. They are liars by necessity often without even realizing that they are. Because they also lie to themselves. It is the political lie that gives their cause its life.

Why, for example, if you were one of them, would you tell the truth? If you were serious about your role in humanity's vanguard, if you had the knowledge (which others did not), that you were certain would lead them to a better world, why would you tell them a truth that they could not "understand" and that would hold them back?

If others could understand your truth, you would not think of yourself as a "vanguard." You would no longer inhabit the morally charmed world of an elite, whose members alone can see the light and whose mission is to lead the unenlightened towards it. If everybody could see the promised horizon and knew the path to reach it, the future would already have happened and there would be no need for the vanguard of the saints.

That is both the ethical core and psychological heart of what it means to be a part of the left. That is where the gratification comes from. To see yourself as a social redeemer. To feel anointed. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism.

That is why it is of little concern to them that their socialist schemes have run aground, burying millions of human beings in their wake. That is why they don't care that their panaceas have caused more human suffering than all the injustices they have ever challenged. That is why they never learn from their "mistakes." That is why the continuance of Them is more important than any truth.

If you were active in the so-called "peace" movement or in the radical wing of the civil rights causes, why would you tell the truth? Why would you tell people that no, you weren't really a "peace activist," except in the sense that you were against America's war. Why would you draw attention to the fact that while you called yourselves "peace activists," you didn't oppose the Communists' war, and were gratified when America's enemies won?

What you were really against was not war at all, but American "imperialism" and American capitalism. What you truly hated was America's democracy, which you knew to be a "sham" because it was controlled by money in the end. That's why you wanted to "Bring the Troops Home," as your slogan said. Because if America's troops came home, America would lose and the Communists would win. And the progressive future would be one step closer.

But you never had the honesty then or now to admit that. You told the lie then to maintain your influence and increase your power to do good (as only the Chosen can). And you keep on telling the lie for the same reason.

Why would you admit that, despite your tactical support for civil rights, you weren't really committed to civil rights as Americans understand rights? What you really wanted was to overthrow the very Constitution that guaranteed those rights, based as it is on private property and the individual both of which you despise.

It is because America is a democracy and the people endorse it, that the left's anti-American, but "progressive" agendas can only be achieved by deceiving the people. This is the cross the left has to bear: The better world is only achievable by lying to the very people they propose to redeem.

Despite the homage contemporary leftists pay to post-modernist conceits, despite their belated and half-hearted display of critical sentiment towards Communist regimes, they are very much the ideological heirs of Stalinist progressives, who supported the greatest mass murders in human history, but who remember themselves as civil libertarian opponents of McCarthy and victims of a political witch-hunt. (Only the dialectically gifted can even begin to follow the logic involved.)"................

Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.

Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.

But the fall of Communism taught the progressives who were its supporters very little. Above all, it failed to teach them the connection between their utopian ideals and the destructive consequences that flowed from them. The fall of Communism has had a cautionary impact only on the overt agendas of the political left. The arrogance that drives them has hardly diminished. The left is like a millenarian sect that erroneously predicted the end of the world, and now must regroup to revitalize its faith.

No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption. In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which "social justice" prevails.

Because the transformation progressives seek is ultimately total, the power they seek must be total as well. In the end, the redemption they envision cannot be achieved as a political compromise, even though compromises may be struck along the way. Their brave new world can ultimately be secured only by the complete surrender of the resisting force. In short, the transformation of the world requires the permanent entrenchment of the saints in power. Therefore, everything is justified that serves to achieve the continuance of Them." Source

*********************************************

Eco-Justice Programs "Eco-justice includes all ministries designed to heal and defend creation, working to assure justice for all of creation and the human beings who live in it. A major task of the Working Group is to provide program ideas and resources to help congregations as they engage in eco-justice. Please continue to browse our website to learn more about what we do and the programs we offer. [1983-Present]

6 posted on 05/04/2012 2:17:39 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Cincinatus' Wife

Liberals/Progressives are Luddites.


7 posted on 05/04/2012 2:46:40 AM PDT by sr4402
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cincinatus' Wife

Nice post! Thanks!


8 posted on 05/04/2012 2:57:53 AM PDT by Tallguy (It's all 'Fun and Games' until somebody loses an eye!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cincinatus' Wife
The city of Las Vegas, NM city council passed an inane anti-fracking ordinance, but the mayor refuses to sign it, saying it is unconstitutional and it will cost the city money in legal fees to defend it.

And the mayor was in a runoff election at the time and still won. Glad to see he was able to stand up to the liberal nitwits and still hold on to his office. A good example for others.

9 posted on 05/04/2012 3:03:33 AM PDT by dirtboy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cincinatus' Wife

I grew up in this same area. I guess it’s been over 50 years now since the first gas well was drilled , and fracked, on our farm. Several more have been drilled since then. The farm is still in my family and I have too many friends and relatives in the area to count, many, many of them have gas wells on their property.

At a large family gathering last Christmas, the subject of gas wells, fracking, etc. came up. After much discussion, almost everybody agreed that the most vocal of the opponents to drilling were the people who did not own property on which a well could be drilled. It comes down to royalty envy, not science.


10 posted on 05/04/2012 3:07:54 AM PDT by Rearden (Deo Vindice)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sr4402
Liberals/Progressives are Luddites.

On Energy, that we should have no oil or gas in the future. That we should not own our own property, but that the EPA does. And that humans should not breath CO2 because it pollutes the planet.

If you think about it, Liberals/Progressives have so bound themselves to the Luddite position that anything can be perceived as harmful to the planet including humans.

11 posted on 05/04/2012 3:26:51 AM PDT by sr4402
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Rearden

“It comes down to royalty envy, not science.”

That pretty much explains it all.


12 posted on 05/04/2012 3:31:26 AM PDT by Dusty Road
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Cincinatus' Wife

We’re dealing with fascists, and fascists can’t be reasoned with.

Hitler and his Nazi crew hated rationality. One of Adolph’s favorite slogans was “Think in blood” (red-hot emotion). It’s easier for mental midgets to be swept along with the crowd through emotion rather than sit down and think. If liberals were forced to examine where the political thoughts in their heads came from, they’d discover that few were arrived at through introspection and logic.

We are heading for a war against unthinking, irrational, two-legged savage animals. Prepare accordingly.


13 posted on 05/04/2012 4:10:44 AM PDT by sergeantdave
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sergeantdave

Indeed!


14 posted on 05/04/2012 5:21:00 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Dusty Road

Lust for power and control figures in as well.


15 posted on 05/04/2012 5:50:36 AM PDT by oyez ( Yomomacare going done once, going down twice, going---..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: dirtboy
Las Vegas, NM is too close to Santa Fe and the anti-energy libs that live there (but that enjoy the benefits of tax dollars from the O&G industry in SE NM).

If the Hobbs city council tried that, they'd be recalled! But they wouldn't as most of them are associated with the industry in some way or another. The town is booming, though with the sand-dune lizard endangered species decision to come down soon and the feds about to issue rules on fracking on federal lands, all within the next several weeks, the economy here could be in for a jolt.

16 posted on 05/04/2012 9:25:36 AM PDT by CedarDave (Romney: Dresses and looks like a '50's character from "Mad Men" but no one's buying his shtick.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson