Re: [asa] Creation Care Magazine

My cable went down last night, so this is the
first chance I've had to get back on line since
then. Sorry for the delay in responding. (See response below)

At 04:57 PM 12/26/2007, David Opderbeck wrote:
>Janice said: Private property rights along with
>the right to the self-defense of them is adhered
>to by those (including the Framers) who embrace the biblical worldview

>Indeed, Jesus preached alot about self defense
>and the right to bear arms. Wasn't that in the
>Sermon on the Mount? Or was it that thing about
>Peter cutting the guy's ear off? ~ David O.

@@ If you don't believe you have the Scriptural
backing to defend yourself by all means necessary
that's your right. I believe otherwise. Jesus
didn't have to reveal (preach) self-evident truths.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident” If
self-evident then they are provable in nature and
they are. “The Right of Self-defense is the first
law of nature” and this can be shown in that
predators like tigers have claws and eagles have
talons which are used both to obtain food and for
self-defense. They are a means to sustain life and to defend it.

"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because
men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the
fact that life, liberty, and property existed
beforehand that caused men to make laws in the
first place." ~ Frederic Bastiat http://jim.com/bastiat.htm

The U.N. denies the self-evident proof in nature
and is saying that their view of how the World
should be is correct and therefore nature is wrong.
UN report proclaims self-defense is not a
right - http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2006/08/un_report_procl.php

"Not resisting evil is an evil of omission, and
an evil of omission can be just as evil as an
evil of commission. For instance, any man who
refuses to protect his wife and children against
a violent intruder with the most effective means
available to him fails them morally." ~ J. P. Moreland paraphrase from memory.

James Burgh wrote in 'Political Disquisitions'
"The possession of arms is the distinction
between a freeman and a slave." Prominent
revolutionaries who subscribed to Burgh's
writings included George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams and John Hancock.

I invite people to voluntarily hang this sign in
their front window: "This is a gun-free home".
Unless they're willing to do that, don't think
I'm going to look kindly on anyone who wants to
use the arm of the government to, in effect,
force me to hang that sign in my window.

>Janice quoted: "Free market environmentalism is
>what the economists at the Property and
>Environment Research Center
>(<http://www.perc.org/>PERC) have been studying
>and promoting for over 15 years"
>
>Not surprisingly, at least some of the stuff on
>this site supports emissions trading (see
><http://www.perc.org/perc.php?subsection=5&id=406>http://www.perc.org/perc.php?subsection=5&id=406)
>-- the true Coasian alternative to Pigovian
>taxes or direct regulation with respect to
>environmental problems. So again -- by
>advocating "property rights" are you advocating
>emissions trading? If not, how to you manage
>the transaction cost problem? ~ David O.

@ I am not advocating FORCED "emissions
trading". If people living within various States
want to voluntarily engage in it with their
neighboring States, they can also figure out how
to best manage their own transaction costs, themselves.

As you well know, the federal government (EPA)
has already unconstitutionally (and quite
unnecessarily - as the empirical evidence plainly
shows) stuck its "one-size-fits-all" nose in the
various State's business. Until that tool of the
central planners is effectively dismantled, the
SPECIFIC "emissions trading" idea being proposed
at PERC is the closest thing to a free-market
solution available at this juncture. It merely
amounts to making the best of a bad situation.

This is the sort of "bad situation" that always
arises when the __central ("GEEZE! It worked on
paper!") planners__ get the chance to put their
utopian ideas to work in the "real" world inhabited by "real" people:

"..To convert a barn into a house in Britain
today you must survey it for bats before you
apply for permission to convert. The bat survey
must be done by an "accredited" bat group and
only in the summer months. Guess what? Bat groups
are very busy in the summer and charge very high
fees. If the survey says there are rare bats in
the building you may be refused permission to
convert; as it turns out, the bats, not you, own
the building. So what happens? People respond to
incentives. Most barn owners resent and detest
bats. I'm told playing Wagner at full volume
clears a building of bats in short order. A
simple scheme of small tax rebates for owners of
barns who add bat-roosting boxes to their houses
would achieve good will as well as bat babies.
But it would not make paid work for bat groups.

PERC inspired me to see the world differently.
The vision of free market environmentalism is
inspiring because it is optimistic, and the
solutions it suggests are voluntary, diverse and
(for the taxpayer) cheap. The only things
standing in its way are vested interests of
politicians, bureaucrats, and pressure
groups. ..." http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=434

Many more examples of the idioticrats in action
are found here: http://www.ecoworld.com/index.cfm

Clearing the Air: The Real Story of the War on
Air Pollution By Indur M. Goklany
http://books.google.com/books?id=doZAq3OcFSIC&dq=clearing+the+air+the+real+story+of+the+war+on+air+pollution+washington+dc+cato+institute

* More:

Frederick Bastiat "The Law"
http://jim.com/bastiat.htm "..Men naturally rebel
against the injustice of which they are victims.
Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the
profit of those who make the law, all the
plundered classes try somehow to enter ­ by
peaceful or revolutionary means ­ into the making
of laws. According to their degree of
enlightenment, these plundered classes may
propose one of two entirely different purposes
when they attempt to attain political power:
Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or
they may wish to share in it. ....

"As long as it is admitted that the law may be
diverted from its true purpose ­ that it may
violate property instead of protecting it ­ then
everyone will want to participate in making the
law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. ....

"And, in all sincerity, can anything more than
the absence of plunder be required of the law?
Can the law ­ which necessarily requires the use
of force ­ rationally be used for anything except
protecting the rights of everyone? I defy anyone
to extend it beyond this purpose without
perverting it and, consequently, turning might
against right. This is the most fatal and most
illogical social perversion that can possibly be
imagined. It must be admitted that the true
solution ­ so long searched for in the area of
social relationships ­ is contained in these
simple words: Law is organized justice.

Now this must be said: When justice is organized
by law ­ that is, by force ­ this excludes the
idea of using law (force) to organize any human
activity whatever, whether it be labor, charity,
agriculture, commerce, industry, education, art,
or religion. The organizing by law of any one of
these would inevitably destroy the essential
organization ­ justice. For truly, how can we
imagine force being used against the liberty of
citizens without it also being used against
justice, and thus acting against its proper purpose?

The Seductive Lure of Socialism

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our
times. It is not considered sufficient that the
law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor
is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to
every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his
faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral
self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that
the law should directly extend welfare,
education, and morality throughout the nation.

This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I
repeat again: These two uses of the law are in
direct contradiction to each other. We must
choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.

Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty

Mr. de Lamartine once wrote to me thusly: "Your
doctrine is only the half of my program. You have
stopped at liberty; I go on to fraternity." I
answered him: "The second half of your program will destroy the first."

In fact, it is impossible for me to separate the
word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot
possibly understand how fraternity can be legally
enforced without liberty being legally destroyed,
and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot.

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I
have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy.

At this point, I think that I should explain
exactly what I mean by the word plunder.

Plunder Violates Ownership

I do not, as is often done, use the word in any
vague, uncertain, approximate, or metaphorical
sense. I use it in its scientific acceptance ­ as
expressing the idea opposite to that of property
[wages, land, money, or whatever]. When a portion
of wealth is transferred from the person who owns
it ­ without his consent and without
compensation, and whether by force or by fraud ­
to anyone who does not own it, then I say that
property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.

I say that this act is exactly what the law is
supposed to suppress, always and everywhere. When
the law itself commits this act that it is
supposed to suppress, I say that plunder is still
committed, and I add that from the point of view
of society and welfare, this aggression against
rights is even worse. In this case of legal
plunder, however, the person who receives the
benefits is not responsible for the act of
plundering. The responsibility for this legal
plunder rests with the law, the legislator, and
society itself. Therein lies the political danger.

It is to be regretted that the word plunder is
offensive. I have tried in vain to find an
inoffensive word, for I would not at any time ­
especially now ­ wish to add an irritating word
to our dissentions. Thus, whether I am believed
or not, I declare that I do not mean to attack
the intentions or the morality of anyone. Rather,
I am attacking an idea which I believe to be
false; a system which appears to me to be unjust;
an injustice so independent of personal
intentions that each of us profits from it
without wishing to do so, and suffers from it
without knowing the cause of the suffering.

Three Systems of Plunder [ snip] ~ Frederick
Bastiat "The Law" http://jim.com/bastiat.htm

~ Janice

>On Dec 26, 2007 4:39 PM, Janice Matchett
><<mailto:janmatch@earthlink.net>janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:
>At 03:43 PM 12/26/2007, David Opderbeck wrote:
>>Janice said: The key to sound environment management is property rights.
>>Unless, as Coase pointed out, there are high
>>transaction costs (as when there are many
>>individual property owners whose rights need to
>>be cleared -- e.g., where there are numerous
>>individual residences near a factory) or
>>impediments to bargaining (as in the
>>international context where politics
>>interfere), right? And this would include
>>strong enforcement mechanisms, including easy
>>access to the courts for individuals whose
>>rights are violated, correct? Or are you
>>advocating tradeable emissions credits, which
>>are the sine qua non of Coasian environmental economics?
>@@
>".....<http://www.ecoworld.com/home//blog/2007/06/21/vaclav-klaus-skeptic/>
><http://www.ecoworld.com/home//blog/2007/06/21/vaclav-klaus-skeptic/>Vaclav
>Klaus , President of the Czech Republic, and
>someone who suffered under communist tyranny,
>has put it thus: "When I study and analyse
>environmental indicators concerning my own
>country and when I compare them with the
>situation in the communist era, there is an
>incredible improvement. The improvement is not
>because of 'collective action' you advocate (it
>existed in the communist era), but because of freedom and of free markets."
>It's not easy to articulate the principles of
>free market environmentalism. When the air and
>water is fouled by pollution, the natural
>emotional reaction is to blame the polluters and
>demand regulations. By extension, the polluters
>are assumed to be motivated by profit, which
>in-turn is demonized. But it's not so simple.
>Profit creates wealth, and wealth funds
>environmental restoration. Central planning -
>communism - destroys wealth, destroys
>incentives, and the practical result is
>abominable pollution, worse than anything we've
>ever seen in the capitalist west, and harder to correct.
>Free market environmentalism is what the
>economists at the Property and Environment
>Research Center (<http://www.perc.org/>PERC)
>have been studying and promoting for over 15
>years. When we began publishing EcoWorld in
>1993, we quickly came across the work PERC was
>doing and we've been following them and learning
>from them ever since. Their message is more
>important now than ever, as the emotional
>juggernaut called global warming threatens to
>drown out reason and demands immediate and extraordinary measures.
>Incentives are not easy to formulate, and
>require governments to referee. But regulations
>and takings are even more problematic - in the
>extreme they lead to environmental devastation
>exemplified by the failed communist economies of
>Eastern Europe. The question is one of emphasis,
>and free market environmentalism recognizes that
>private property, ownership, stewardship,
>incentives, and the profit motive properly
>channelled is superior to central planning. This
>recent report by noted author Matt Ridley
>attests to his conversion to free market
>environmentalism, something that even - indeed
>especially - today's global warming alarmism
>should not consign to the list of endangered ideologies. - Ed "Redwood" Ring
>
>Much more:
><http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=434>http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=434
>
>~ Janice ... (Private property rights along with
>the right to the self-defense of them is adhered
>to by those (including the Framers) who embrace
>the biblical worldview. It is the unchanging
>backbone of the Constitution. Our government is
>set up by "we the people" and public servants
>are sworn to uphold and defend that Constitution on our behalf.)
>
>
>>On Dec 26, 2007 2:41 PM, Janice Matchett
>><<mailto:janmatch@earthlink.net>janmatch@earthlink.net > wrote:
>>At 12:49 PM 12/26/2007, Michael Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>Should we club together and get Janice a subscription? ~ Michael
>>@ Why would I want a subscription to a cult
>>magazine wherein I can tell you _exactly_ what
>>will be in the various issues even before
>>they're published? I can also tell you
>>_exactly_ what inconvenient truths the
>>well-known Marxist _globalist_ collectivists at
>>EEN won't be publishing in any of the issues. Here's a sample:
>>Hosea 4:1-3: "Hear the word of the
>>LORD...because the LORD has a charge to bring
>>against you who live in the land: "the land
>>mourns because there is only cursing, lying and
>>murder, stealing and adultery ...."
>>Isa. 65: 17-23: "Behold, I will create new
>>heavens and a new earth. The former things will
>>not be remembered, nor will they come to
>>mind. ... They will build houses and dwell in
>>them; they will plant vineyards and eat their
>>fruit. [No one will steal what they produce
>>from them and give it to someone else in
>>exchange for their vote]. No longer will they
>>build houses and others live in them, or plant
>>and others eat. .... my chosen individuals will
>>long enjoy the works of their
>>hands. Individuals will not toil in vain [for
>>a 'collective'] .." says the LORD.
>>Rev. 20: 12-13: "And I saw the dead, small and
>>great, standing before God... And they were
>>judged, EACH INDIVIDUAL, according to HIS [individual] works..."
>>Rev. 21:1-8: "Then I saw a new heaven and a
>>new earth, for the first earth had passed
>>away. Also there was no more sea. .. . . He
>>who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making
>>everything new!' .. the cowardly, unbelieving,
>>abominable, murders, sexually
>>immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars
>>shall have their part in the second death
>>[complete/total separation from what they hated
>>( ie: all that is good) for eternity]."
>>~ Janice ... who knows that one of the "good
>>things" they hate is private individual
>>property rights. The key to sound environment
>>management is property rights.
>><http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1944220/posts?page=9#9%C2%A0>http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1944220/posts?page=9#9
>>
>>>----- Original Message -----
>>>From: <mailto:steven.dale.martin@gmail.com>Steve Martin
>>>To: <mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com>David Opderbeck
>>>Cc: <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>asA
>>>Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2007 2:24 PM
>>>Subject: Re: [asa] Creation Care Magazine
>>>
>>>Hi David,
>>>
>>>Thanks. That looks interesting. I also
>>>noticed that we (the ASA) are a partner
>>>organization. See:
>>><http://www.creationcare.org/partners.php>http://www.creationcare.org/partners.php.
>>>Not sure what exactly the partnership entails.
>>>
>>>thanks,
>>>
>>>On 12/26/07, David Opderbeck
>>><<mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com>dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>Of possible interest to list members: I got a
>>>subscription to Creation Care magazine for
>>>Christmas (
>>><http://www.creationcare.org/magazine/>http://www.creationcare.org/magazine/).
>>>Seems like a great publication
>>>--
>>>Steve Martin (CSCA)
>>><http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/>http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com

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Received on Thu Dec 27 10:34:33 2007