Monday, March 2, 2009

Irony is deeper than the snow

Snowed in here in New England, watching the streaming video of the civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant.

A little while ago, they were being addressed by a "scientist" from India who said, "Coal, like all the fossil fuels, should stay under" the ground. A quick click over to Instapundit showed this headline:

LOSING CARBON ENTHUSIASM: India Sends Tough Signal To West. “India will continue to resist pressure to accept legally-binding cuts in its emissions of earth-warming greenhouse gases (GHG) at key climate change talks later this year, the country’s chief climate change negotiator has said.”
Now the mob is chanting, "This is what democracy looks like." If democracy = mob rule. Well, that's why Franklin said, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

Now the chant is "Support the workers, not the plants." Like the way the Left can support the troops but not their mission. I hear that as "Shut down the mines, shut down the plants, put the workers on welfare."

I'm tempted to give this a "tools" label.

7 comments:

blake said...

Ha! Tools, indeed.

Did the "scientist" have a white lab coat? That's how you can tell who they are!

Hector Owen said...

I was born in Kentucky, though not in the coal country; I suspect a lot of those miners would rather starve than go on welfare. Not that they would starve. They would think of something. Hunting, farming; I hear that they are raising a lot of Mary-Jane in Kentucky these days.

blake said...

20% of the population on the dole here in L.A.

Twenty.

Percent.

Hector Owen said...

You have read Niven and Pournelle's Tep's Town stories, haven't you? The Burning City and Burning Tower? And the arcology story, Oath of Fealty? Tales of past and future L.A.

Oath of Fealty is the source of the line, "Think of it as evolution in action."

Though your comment reminds me more of the decadent latter days of Rome, and that more or less apocryphal line that may or may not be from Alexander Tytler:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

blake said...

I recently saw that attributed to De Tocqueville--another Alex--but I've seen it attribute to many an ancient Roman.

Perhaps the Greeks weren't so fond of voting themselves gifts?

Hector Owen said...

Greek democracies were not all that democratic (the franchise was limited to men who owned property) and still rarely lasted longer than a generation or so. As I dimly recall from a semi-classical education long ago. And even then; it was democratic Athens that decided Socrates had to die.

blake said...

Well, in fairness, Socrates was a royal PITA. And far be it from me to idealize ancient Greek democracies. (Well, maybe not that far from me.)

Last year I read Trying Neaira which was just a whiz-bang of a read about the times.

Far from ideal. All warty and litigious, much like our own times.