Lights ON for Earth Hour

“Earth Hour 2010 takes place on Saturday 27 March at 8.30pm (local time) and is a global call to action…to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Europe to Asia to the Americas will stand in darkness.” - http://www.earthhour.org/.

The Earth Hour organizers would have your turn off the lights for an hour, to show support for saving the planet. But I have a call to action of my own. At 8:30 PM on Saturday, turn on every light in your house.

Turn on your lights to express skepticism about Climate Change. The Earth Hour website says it’s “all about giving people a voice on the future of our planet and working together to create a sustainable low carbon future for our planet.” But as I’ve written elsewhere ( http://www.grebnesisrazor.com/2009/05/climate-change-caused-by-sun.html ), there’s good reason to be skeptical of the need for a low carbon future.

Turn on your lights to protest the Big Government agenda. Now that the liberals have won the health care vote, their next major initiative is likely to be the so-called Cap and Trade proposal to place new taxes on nearly every productive activity. Show your opposition.

Finally, turn on your lights because they’re beautiful. The harnessing of electricity is a magnificent achievement and should be celebrated. The nighttime American cityscape inspired artists like Robert Hoppe, filmmakers like Woody Allen, and refugees like Ayn Rand, who wrote of her arrival in New York after years of starvation, poverty, and repression in Soviet Russia, “seeing the first lighted skyscrapers – it was snowing, very faintly, and I think I began to cry.” To plunge iconic buildings and landmarks, buildings that have had that kind of effect on people, to plunge them into darkness is shameful indeed.

BTW, I’d like to create an album of homes lit up for Earth Hour. If you get a pic and are willing to share, please send it to me at webmaster@nexusofpower.com or post it to the Nexus of Power Facebook group. Also, please forward this call to action to others who may be supportive.

Obama vs. the Constitution

BRET BAIER: And there are a lot of people around America that have a problem with this process. You called it an ugly process just last month.


PRESIDENT OBAMA: I've got to tell — I've got to say to you, there are a lot more people who are concerned about the fact that they may be losing their house or going bankrupt because of health care.


- Interview, Fox News, 17 March 2010

It seems that President Obama is impatient with process, at least when the process won’t yield the outcome he wants.

I submit that the Constitution of the United States is all about process. The Founders were very clear on that point: “It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” (The Federalist No. 51)

Mr. Obama took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He cannot keep that oath if he does not take Constitutional process seriously.

In Defeat: Defiance

In 1938, Neville Chamberlain, then Prime Minister of Great Britain, betrayed the Czechs to Hitler at Munich, and thereby passed up the best opportunity of stopping the Nazi war machine without a war. When the news reached England, an aging and washed up politician named Winston Churchill talked about getting a group of friends together and throwing a brick through the Prime Minister’s window.

Churchill has been much on my mind since the House of Representatives passed the Health Insurance Takeover last night, and not just because I have an urge to chuck construction materials at certain D.C. residences.

There’s no point in sugar coating. Last night was a disaster. It was the worst defeat for freedom in three decades. But we can draw inspiration from the example of Mr. Churchill when facing a disaster and a threat to freedom that was far worse.

As a result of Chamberlain’s appeasement at Munich, most of Europe lost its freedom during the next two years. On May 10, 1940, the German armies poured into the Netherlands, the collapse of France was imminent, and the Nazis were weeks away from driving British forces off the continent. In Churchill’s words, “The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.” Under those horrific circumstances, compared to which Obamacare is, like a dripping faucet, merely a minor annoyance, Neville Chamberlain resigned and King George asked Winston Churchill to become his new Prime Minister.

And then Churchill rallied his country. In the next several weeks, he gave two of the most famous speeches in the English language.

On June 4 he told the House of Commons, “I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

"Even though large parts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

And then, on June 18, “Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.’”

Churchill’s oratory was remarkably effective. In the following months, under sometimes nightly bombings, there are stories of the British singing “Roll out the Barrel” and “White Cliffs of Dover” in their air raid shelters. Hitler did not break them in their island, and he lost the war.

Without losing sight of the gravity of the situation and the cost in lives, Churchill not only led his people during dark times, but he had fun doing it. If you go to London today, you can visit Churchill’s own air raid shelter, the underground war rooms built to protect the Cabinet during the Blitz. But it turns out he was rarely there. More likely he was up on the roof, watching the bombs fall. On a visit to America, he recited poetry to Franklin Roosevelt and told jokes to a joint session of Congress ("If my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way 'round, I might have got here on my own.")

So yes, last night was disaster. But if we harness the power of oratory and if we never surrender, we will have our finest hour. And let’s have fun doing it. Because you know, those angry people, who never mix humor and politics, tend to be on the other side.

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