Giggles

You can feel safer today knowing that a no-kill animal shelter in Wisconsin was recently raided by a group of 13 heavily armed agents of the government.  They were there to get Giggles, an illegally rescued baby deer.  A shelter worker said the agents descended on the property “like a swat team” and soon the deer was being carried off in a body bag.  Giggles is dead now and the world is somehow a better place thanks to our government helpers.

Speaking of killing things, the logging industry in the western states was mostly killed by an environmental movement in the 80′s and 90′s.  We were told that spotted owls were in decline and the only solution was to decimate the logging industry.  Lumber mills closed.  Logging towns died. But spotted owl populations declined anyway.

It was later discovered that spotted owls were actually declining for another reason.   A competitive species, the barred owl, was winning the competition for territory.  This is called natural selection and has been part of the natural world from the beginning of time.  But environmentalists like one owl more than the other, so there is a huge government effort to kill or remove approximately 3,600 barred owls.  They are going in with guns.

Perhaps, after the owl slaughter is complete, officials can start an effort to stop plate tectonics.  If we could just get the right legislation we could stop earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and all those unpleasant things caused by movement in the earth’s crust.

Can you think of any reason not to tackle big jobs like that?  Think of what we are doing to correct the earth’s climate.  Over the course of time, our planet has been much cooler and much hotter.  It has had much higher CO2 concentrations and much lower.  It has seen many ice ages with periods of warming in between.  The ocean level has been much higher and much lower, many times.

But, we like how things are right now – right now in our tiny little speck of time.  The way things are right now is the way things should always be.  Sure, 98% of the species that have ever existed are extinct.  But we need to stop that process, too,  while we are stopping any future change in climate.

The good news is that our politicians are willing to stop all the natural processes that we don’t like.  With some carefully crafted legislation, they will take control of everything… for our benefit.

Even in small matters, they are there for us.  Seattle officials recently banned the “potentially offensive” word “citizen” from all public documents.  Campus speech codes limit language to officially approved words.  Young children are being expelled from school for making a gun shape with their hand or making a gun shape with a school pastry.  Officials dictate the appropriate size of soft drinks .  Government publications tell farmers how to milk cows.  We have seen crackdowns on lemonade stands and girl scout cookie stands and happy meal toys. Food inspectors are checking children’s lunch bags to see if the contents meet USDA requirements.  Everywhere we turn, helpful government officials are managing our lives.

If you think these pretentious do-gooders are making the world a better place, here is my response:  Giggles.