What I think

Hello all, I find myself with a small amount of time here on New Year's Day to say hello, and to extend my best 2016 wishes to all. Note that I have not made a resolution to blog more, but it could still happen.

This post is just to jot down a few things; impressions if you will, about current events and themes that may survive into 2016.

• Paris and San Bernardino.

I have one piece of advice for our friends in Paris. Not only Paris, but San Bernardino, New York, and any other city that is or is likely to be victimized by evil destruction: Learn to return fire. It's that simple, and that urgent. Learn to return fire. We outnumber the enemy. If the sentiment is to solve this particular problem, the solution is to arm as many free citizens as we possibly can.

Learn to return fire. Spread the word.

You might be surprised that I also believe there is a government role that can be played here: Congress should enact a law making it illegal to create gun free zones. Gun free zones are exactly what the bad guys like to see. If we eliminate those, it will never be safe for a gunman to create the kind of havoc that we see and read about. 

Learn to return fire. Eliminate gun free zones. Take back our freedoms.

• Climate change.

If you ask scientists if they believe in global warming, 89% of them would say that, yes, the current trend is for global temperature rise. That's enough for some players to demand billions of dollars in new regulations and academic research expenditures. They don't even get to the second question, which is: What do you believe is causing it? It matters little what causes it, they demand money and government interference to be tossed around as if our lives literally depend on it. 

Don't fall for it.

If there is global warming (and that's not necessarily a bad thing - warmer temperatures are conducive to longer growing seasons in developing countries, for example), then we would be far better served preparing for consequences of said warming. Rather than spending our money on willy nilly carbon-phobia schemes, we would be better served by saving our hard earned wealth, so that we can address the feared catastrophes in a more systematic way.

Instead of shutting down coal plants because they believe it would reduce the land surface of a distant Pacific atoll, how about doing a little conservation work on the atoll itself. 

Learn to be resilient.

Seriously, we can't stop global warming anymore than we can redirect a cold front. To think that we have that kind of control over a planet that has seen unimaginable cataclysms without our help requires a particular form of arrogance. 

These people are to be ignored. The best we can hope for is to develop resilience.

Resilience against whatever the planet delivers is what got us this far; and it's our only effective tool for withstanding anything that comes later.

• Mars

The people who think we have irretrievably broken this planet already are thinking about Mars. I'm okay with spending the money to send everybody who feels like that there. Let's see if they can make socialism work up there.

• Diversity

Setting up enclaves of Syrians, Mexicans, Cubans, or any other identity group you want to name in separate communities in the US is not diversity. It is unAmerican. Allowing immigrants to come to the US as individuals, each with their own dreams, to raise their own families, and contribute to society is diversity, it is America, and it is to be encouraged. One family at a time.