When one
writes daily about the personalities, events and issues of the day, there is a
point at which it occurs that you have revisited a particular story before and
that is because each successive generation is apparently compelled to visit the
same issues and make the same mistakes over and over again.
Two
classic examples are gun control and immigration. At what point are those
elected geniuses and their “solutions” going to understand that enforcement of existing laws, not more laws, is the answer?
It is
absurd to read that the congressional “gang of eight” has labored over the
immigration issue to produce a bill that only a liberal could love. Apparently,
while the Constitution is only a few pages in length, it now requires bills in
excess of a thousand pages to address anything before Congress. The bottom line
for immigration is that the problem will be revisited in twenty years. At which
time you had better have learned to speak and read Spanish as a second
language, if it is not your first.
As regards
gun control, that issue was decided in the Constitution as an individual right,
not a collective one as opponents have stated, citing the term “militias.” In
the days when the Constitution was written militias were made up of
individuals, all of whom had to bring their own guns. All the palaver about gun
control seems to ignore that the recent killings that led up to the Newtown
massacre were all perpetrated by crazy people. A thousand gun control laws can
never and will never have any effect on crazy people. Or criminals.
Not that
long ago, Timothy McVeigh used a truck bomb to kill a lot of people in Oklahoma
and on Monday someone used two bombs in Boston instead of just writing a letter
to the editor of the Globe or Herald. Hey, let’s pass a bomb control law too!
People who want to use bombs will just have to register with their local police
department. Problem solved!
While
we’re at it, why even hold a national election in 2016? Don’t we all know that
Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party candidate and no Republican can
ever possibly defeat her? Or do we “know” that because the liberal media keep
telling us that?
When I
open the morning newspaper and read the word “Afghanistan” I am reminded that
Alexander the Great ran in a lot of problems there, followed by the British
Empire at the height of its power, followed by the former Soviet Union that got
its head handed to it, and the U.S. has now been there longer than the time we
spent in Vietnam. We will leave in 2014 and the place will return to planting
poppies and making opium, its chief export. To which any sane person must ask,
“What was that all about?” (It was about killing al Qaeda and Taliban Islamist
crazies, a process that will not end until they are all dead.)
The other
place that is beyond repair is North Korea. Often called a “rogue” nation, it
is the puppet of China and they apparently want to keep it that way. No one
likes change and the Chinese have had to go through so much in the last two
generations they are just pooped. If a couple of million North Koreans are
enslaved, well tough luck say the Chinese. Meanwhile, they keep making nuclear
weapons and improving their missile technology. If they will just promise to
stop, says our Secretary of State, we might actually talk to them. Good luck
with that.
Pundits
yet unborn will be writing about the Islamic jihad; the war on all other
religions in general and the West in particular. Other than the invention of
algebra, there are few other things that
one can attribute to Islam or the Arab peoples. They don’t like each other.
They don’t like you. End of story.
Another
story pundits must address is our current system of taxes which everyone agrees
is an egregious mess. I am betting that ten years from now people will be
saying it is an egregious mess.
Most
problems dealing with the great issues of our times either don’t get solved or
yield long term to inertia. Those with a moral component like slavery required
a Civil War to end and was followed by more than a century to finally achieve
some degree of equality and equity, but try telling that to the street gangs of
Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia and other “urban centers.” Remember
when “urban” meant a city and not a giant pocket of poverty, murder, and bad
attitudes?
The great
issue of the later decades of the last century and the first years of the
current one has been the “climate.” More specifically, it was and still is the
giant hoax called global warming, but that has been magically transform into
“the climate” and, in our schools and in our media, we are constantly told that
the seas are rising, the glaciers are melting, the polar bears are going
extinct, droughts and hurricanes are increasing, and on and on. The good news
is that none of this is true. And, as far as the climate is concerned, there is
NOTHING anyone can or should do to have an effect on it.
What
remains is the question of whether to leave coal, natural gas, and oil in the
ground where it can be of absolutely no use to anyone as a source of energy.
This is the current policy of the Obama administration.
No doubt,
this pundit will be revisiting these issues for some time to come.
© Alan
Caruba, 2013
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