I was called a fascist very recently by someone who didn't like my conservative/libertarian views. Let's head to the Dictionary, shall we?

fascism noun: a system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT CONTROL of private enterprise, and subjugation of the individual in favor of the state.

Does this sound like what I preach? Does this sound like ME?? Or does this sound more like... socialism? Liberalism? Get it right next time. You sound like a damned fool when, in the course of your ad hominem attacks, you can't even use the correct key words.

I would like to post the top 50 list ("50 Things You Must Do to ***SAVE THE EARTH***" or some such BS) I mentioned several months ago. This list is kind of dated, as you will see. There are varying levels of lunacy represented here. See what you think of each of these and then read my comments afterwards.

1. Bury your car
2. Become a total vegetarian
3. Grow your own vegetables
4. Have your power lines disconnected
5. Don't have children
6. Limit the world population of vehicles
7. Don't build cars
8. Stop building roads
9. Replace roads with homes, parks and gardens
10. Halt weapons production and exports
11. Stop the sale, distribution and export of cigarettes
12. Send money to Brazil to provide urban jobs for impoverished workers now forced into the rainforests
13. Blockade a lumber truck carrying old-growth trees
14. Spend a month tree-sitting
15. Live within the World Average Income ($1250 a year) for one month ($104.17)
16. Cut up your credit cards
17. Unplug your television
18. Undertake a "Conservation Sabbath" -- one day a week without consuming electricity or fuel
19. Fast one day each week and send the money saved on food to help feed the hungry
20. Adopt a homeless person
21. Raise the Minimum Wage to a survival income
22. Enact a Maximum Wage Law
23. Tie politicians' salaries to the average working wage
24. Replace majority rule with proportional representation
25. Replace the Electoral College with direct democratic elections
26. Abolish the CIA and the National Security Act of 1949
27. Pass a Nature Amendment to the US Constitution
28. Retire Presidential Advisor John Sununu
29. Plant one new tree every day
30. Go to jail for something you believe in
31. Don't own pets
32. Allow all beef-producing domestic cattle to become extinct
33. Redirect the military budget to restoration work; convert weapons factories to peaceful research; retrain soldiers for ecological restoration
34. Remove US Forest Service from under the Agriculture Department; place USFS, Bureau of Land Management, Fish & Wildlife Service under the EPA
35. Consume only products produced within your bioregion
36. Don't eat anything that comes in a package
37. Don't buy anything that comes in a box
38. Require operators and owners of nuclear powerplants to live within one mile of the site
39. Mandate federal recycling and institute a refuse tax on solid waste
40. Pipe polluted water back into the water supplies of the companies that do the polluting
41. Don't own anything that runs on batteries
42. Boycott the Big Top
43. Travel by bus, never by air
44. Stop using toilet paper
45. Extend the life of your wardrobe by learning to make and mend your own clothes
46. Give money to every single panhandler you meet
47. Democratize your workplace: start a union or a collective
48. Is your job sustainable (i.e. recession-proof)? If not, learn to farm
49. Liberate a zoo
50. In honor of Earth Day, ask your boss if you can take a day off to work on healing the planet ... with pay!

And now my comments.

(1) I don't think so! Stay the HELL away from my vehicles!

(2) Be my guest. But remember, there's always SOMEONE who's a better/more devout vegetarian/vegan than you are. Moi, I enjoy eating meat and fish and chicken and eggs and milk and cheesecake and ice cream and other dairy products and I'll be shopping for genuine leather riding gear one of these days. I'm afraid I won't be confining myself to plant consumption only.

(3) Hey I got no problem with that. My mother used to grow veggies back when we had a huge backyard in Houston, and we even took them to market to sell and trade. It was fun and a good little lesson in basic capitalism for a 5 year old. :o)

(4) Erm, yah, there's an intelligent solution.

(5) More power to ya, alot of the people don't have what it takes to raise kids properly anyway. Better to not have them at all than to drown them all in the bathtub and then have perky little Katie Couric declare you a hero and set up a legal defense fund for you.

(6) Limit how?? Sounds like some flimsy UN or EU resolution.

(7) Err, okay, I won't... I'll buy em from someone else who does. Hey, while you're at it, why not vote for a Presidential Candidate who PROMISES, as part of his PLATFORM, to significantly and progressively INCREASE the price of gasoline (yah, that would be AlGore)?

(8) I know some places in North Texas that sort of do this: they've stopped REPAIRING existing roads.

(9) Did you know human beings aren't actually flesh and blood? We're actually *flowers*.

(11) Because we've GOT to save you from yourself. So what if we have to change this from a market economy to a command economy? And hey, what about all those COOL Green liberal kids who use their cigs as part of their 'tude? At least this would stop 60 year old lung cancer victims from suing (and winning against) cigarette manufacturers who SOMEHOW duped them into smoking two packs a day for 40 years.

(14) Hehehehe. Tree-sitting.

(15) 60 cents per hour of work IS pretty bad... Darn, now I feel ashamed that I live in a free market economy, and I think everything I earn should now go to feed those less fortunate (who don't live in a stable capitalistic environment with a healthy entrepreneurial spirit and the freedom of self-determination). Hey, maybe Nike and Dole and others should export some more of their jobs. You know, the ones the liberals are always complaining about?

(16) Now this one makes some real sense. Except I think they're coming at it from a different direction. I think they think credit cards represent desires and private ownership of property and you don't need to own anything or utilize any more of your own income than you need for basic life maintenance. Hey, the whole reason we need economics is because human beings have unlimited wants and needs and only scarce resources to fulfill those wants and needs--it's all about allocation of resources and choice. If we can only get people to not have ANY wants and fulfill everyone's needs equally (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, right?), then we can have successful totalitarian rule and live in total, centrally-planned harmony. Of course, this could involve some extremely heavy mind control or alteration and we might resemble the Borg more than a society of human beings at some point, but hey we'll be a TRUE DEMOCRACY. Yay.

(17) Done. I'm sick of listening to the liberal television media (although I do miss Mr. George Will on Sunday mornings) and the number of shows I'd actually watch this Fall could be counted on one finger (ST Enterprise).

(18) That is, if you haven't already had your power lines disconnected, eh?

(19) Just don't forget to drink lots of fluids. I think this would amount to about $2.50 a week for myself. I have a better idea. Why don't I finish school, start a business, and HIRE some of these hungry people?

(20) Liberalism is so easy. It's all about feelings. All you have to do is feel sorry for someone. Feed the homeless for a week at Christmas and you don't feel quite as ashamed that you or your family have succeeded in achieving a modicum of wealth in our free market economy (while others, for whatever reason, haven't even achieved enough to be able to afford a home). How much harder is it to find a way, through private enterprise, to give the homeless who want to work a job, and to realize that some of the homeless are where they are because of repeating patterns of behavior, of volitional choice?

(21) Oh please. Let's ratchet up the government control of private business so that those who stay at "minimum wage" perpetually have a "survival income". No, thank you. Minimum wage increases are detrimental for a number of reasons (artificial wage floors, elimination of lower-wage jobs, etc.), but are mostly a vote-garnering tool.

(22) THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST OFFENSIVE SUGGESTION IN THIS WHOLE LIST. >:(

(24) Why not replace them both with Individual Sovereignty and Self-Government?

(25) Political Campaigns would take place entirely on television and the interests of 90 percent of the counties in the country would be ignored...

(27) Excuse me?? A Nature Amendment? Hey, did you know some bedwetter in California (one of Gray Davis' cronies) a few months ago proposed an Amendment to the US Constitution declaring it ILLEGAL to make a profit by offering a public utility? This the same state that screwed itself over by simultaneously refusing to build any new power plants and adopting haphazard deregulation? HAHAHA!! The Left Coast is always good for a laugh. And now Texas is eeevil because we provide them with power they can't make themselves.

(28) He's been gone a LONG time. See how old this is? But I have a possible substitute: Let's retire bigoted race-baiting demagogue Jesse Jackson, the single most divisive entity in the US.

(30) Probably will at some point. It probably ain't going to be because I think a damn subspecies of salmon is more important than the lives of four firefighters though.

(31) Wha?!? Not even domesticated dogs and cats? Screw that, when I own a home I'm going to have a loyal inside dog and possibly a well-behaved kitty.

(32) Genocide eh? I take it they'd include chickens and pigs as well? Maybe all domesticated animals? Sheep, horses, etc.?

(33) And then we could all hold hands and put flowers in our hair and ask those mean ole Syrians and Iraqis and Libyans and Chinese and Afghans and Rwandans and Israelis and Palestinians and Sudanese and Indians and Pakistanis and the IRA and Hammas and the PLO and Bin-Laden to also disband their armies and to please please please not attack us. [[snort of contempt]]

(34) Because the EPA does SUCH a GREAT job with their current jurisdictions.

(35) Does anyone know how far my bioregion extends? What if I said it included all of North America?

(36) Doh!! That rules out Little Debbie snack cakes in all their wonderful varieties! Also inclues granola bars, Mrs Baird's bread, corn flakes, potatos, strawberries, pasta, carrots, yogurt, etc.

(37) Well, there you go. If it was in a box at any time during the distribution chain, it's off-limits. There go most or all of my possessions. Which I s'pose is the point. Individual ownership of property is unnecessary and even counterproductive to the goals of the community as a whole, right?

(39) This is already mandated on a local level in some areas. Fort Worth, in particular, has some pretty Draconian recycling laws! I was just amazed to hear of some of them. Liberals on the rampage. And I think YET ANOTHER tax is just what we need, don't you? We surely don't have enough money confiscated by the coercive power of the state yet.

(41) Wow, first no electric power, now no battery power either. Guess we'll tell time by sundial in this little Bohemian Utopia we're building here.

(42) When I was a small child, we went to the Ringling Bros circus in Houston. I had nightmares. We had some kind of "backstage pass", so I got to meet the clowns. The whole long, dark evening scared the shit out of me! Some of it was like seeing my fevered nightmares brought to life.

(44) Ewwwww! Not only are they a bunch of ridiculous hyper-tree-huggers, but they smell bad too!

(45) This idea has a bit of merit--the mending part I mean. But I don't really want to make my own clothes. See, this guy named Adam Smith wrote this book called The Wealth of Nations in which he discussed specialization and division of labor and the fact that in a market economy, each person's self-interests guide the general economy "as if by an invisible hand" toward the ends most advantageous to all. When I buy a shirt, an exchange, beneficial to both parties, is occuring. I'm handing over money I've earned elsewhere in exchange for the labor that's been done to create the shirt by those who've specialized in creating shirts. I get what I want--a shirt, which is more valuable or as valuable to me as the amount of money I pay for it; the creator of the shirt gets what he wants--money, which can be used for any purpose and which is more valuable or as valuable to him as the amount of labor expended in the creation of the shirt. Mutual benefits through individual self-interest. I specialize in something which I am able to provide to others in exchange for money, and I use that money to exchange with others who've specialized in a variety of other enterprises. IT IS THE KEY TO THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. It is why this country is great and why its productive citizens enjoy unprecedented quality of life. I feel sure alot of the "intellectual" ultra-liberal-cumsocialist "thinkers" I've come across haven't even grasped this simple concept.

(46) Go ahead. Make ya feel better. They are victims of the system. It isn't their fault. And remember, they Will Work For Food.

(47) I just LOOOOVE unions. Screw that. The more I think about, the more #47 pisses me off. "Start a collective".

(48) Um, yah, I was going to suggest "learn a separate set of job skills or earn a second degree". Perhaps they mean you should "learn to farm" so you can collect government subsidies and feed at the public trough.

(49) Oh how quaint. Look, they're suggesting you set all the animals free at your local zoo. Didn't I see a movie like that? I'm not sure it would be safe to have lions and bears roaming the streets (err, parks and gardens--see #9).

(50) After he finishes laughing, you can ponder what "healing the planet" would really entail--and just what the hell it is it needs to be healed of.

So that's that.

OH and this:

How about that Kyoto Protocol? That mean ole President Bush just refuses to accede to the wishes of the UN/EU. He's "destroying the earth so he can make millions for his friends" (snicker).

Oh give me a break. The Kyoto Protocol was presented to the Senate for ratification by Der Slickmeister (Clinton) in 1997. The result? A UNANIMOUS, NINETY-FIVE to NOTHING vote AGAINST accepting ANY part of it. Surpise. The truth hurts sometimes. It ain't just every liberal's favorite punching bag (Bush--though most token liberals I've talked to can't think of any good reasons why they don't like him or voted against him--and in fact if some knew what today's Democratic party actually stands for, they'd never vote for another liberal), it's the Legislature as well that feels this way. We will not be bullied into accepting all manner of ridiculous restrictions appearing as thinly disguised political and economic envy and ire from the European community. Dick Gephardt, though, never misses a chance to deride the man who has brought some dignity to the office of President. The man lies more than Der Slickmeister!! What do you suppose Thomas Jefferson might make of Dick Gephardt? What do you suppose Niccolo Machiavelli might think of him? Gephardt is a fear-monger and power-grabber who shrouds his socialist agenda (his desire to grow the government to epic proportions, to hand ALL economic decisions and control of capital to the government, and to manage every aspect of his loyal subjects' lives) in dire predictions, daily demagoguery, and ""compassion"". Face it, Dick Gephardt is The Prince.