NO WAY OUT
American taxpayers will end up paying for global warming and terror war
BY MIKE ZIGLER

Mike Zigler is editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine. After serving as news editor at Las Vegas CityLife and editor-in-chief at the UNLV Rebel Yell, he currently directs internal communications on the Las Vegas Strip. Feel free to reach him at mikezigler@cox.net  Other stories by Mike Zigler

In Greek mythology, there is a well-worn story of sailors who must navigate between two sea monsters, each one situated on opposite sides of a narrow channel of water. So close is this channel, it is said, that sailors ultimately have to choose which monster to fight. Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “between Scylla and Charybdis”? Those are the names of these death-dealing monsters, and the phrase has come to mean having to choose between two unattractive choices, in the same way that we often find ourselves caught “between a rock and a hard place.”

If there’s ever been a moment in the history of American taxpayers when the Greek myth offered the most meaning, it is right now. Today those on the left, like former Vice President Al Gore, demand that something be done to combat global warming, a theory warning that the average temperature of the Earth has been increasing over the years due to man’s presence, and will continue to increase. The results, liberals tell us, will be catastrophic: extreme weather, deadly floods, increased disease and famine, species extinction. 

Rather than deal with this problem in a sound way, liberals use our fear to increase government’s influence in our everyday lives. In fact, it is only Ron Paul, a principled Republican, who has consistently opposed foreign wars for oil and voted against government programs that encourage development in environmentally sensitive areas like Katrina-ravaged New Orleans and parts of Florida, where the government now offers flood insurance. (That’s right, you and I are financing the ability of coastal landowners to be more easily afford living in places nature doesn’t want them living.) If the Democrats really wanted to fight global warming, they would cut taxes and spending so that people could afford to buy their own insurance and abandon the Kyoto Treaty, which places the burden on the United States to cut emissions while letting China off the hook.

But it’s not a safer, cleaner, more temperate environment that liberals really want. Want they want is the government to enhance its power.

It’s the same on the other side of the political aisle. For Republicans, the big canard is the War on Terror, which is the Charybdes to the Democrats’ global-warming Scylla. Like the War on Drugs, the neoconservative military jihad against violent Muslims is a dog-and-pony show that offers little if any results. Even the Brits realize this and at least had the sense to drop the words “war on terrorism” after their Foreign Office told cabinet ministers and British diplomats to stop using the phrase because it was not only stupid but utterly counterproductive. A trillion dollars in the hole, thousands of Americans killed and what do we have to show for it? A green zone in Baghdad, Afghanistan falling apart, and Pakistan in political chaos. And now U.S. naval vessels are playing a sad game of chicken with Iranian speedboats in the Persian Gulf.

But it’s not a safer, democratized Middle East that Republicans really want. What they want is the government is to enhance its power.

And even in Libertarian-friendly Nevada, the bogus terror war takes precedence over taxpayers, with Gov. Jim Gibbons having approved $344,000 in taxpayer funding for a “fusion center” in Carson City. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the center is an “intelligence collecting facility” that will “collect and analyze information generated from the 15 rural counties and from Nevada’s Native American tribal governments.” Much of the work done there will be “evaluating tips about suspicious activities generated by law enforcement and the public.”

In other words, it’s a complete redundancy. Law enforcement already shares information under the guise of the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone who thinks this center is going to do a thing to stop terror in Nevada or anywhere in the country is either crazy or has been watching far too much Fox News. 

Liberty Watch is completely on board with Gibbons on the issue of reducing state spending, and especially in higher education. Even after George Bush the Second ends his dynasty, the next President — if his (or her) name isn’t Ron Paul — will likely take over with an anti-global warming agenda that’ll siphon even more money from taxpayers.

Maybe we won’t have to choose between Scylla and Charybdes. It’s more than likely these monsters will swallow taxpayers at once.