Thursday, December 30, 2004
The Tsunamis
Well, I've finally gotten to it.
I'm not going to give a blow by blow account of the mounting dead and how much each country is contributing, or how the U.N. has implied that the Western countries are "stingy" and should raise taxes, as that's already being done quite well by other sites.
Barking Moonbat Early Warning System does an excellent job of exposing Jan Egeland as an eternal malcontent who would milk us all like cows. (Heck it sounds like the entire U.N. to me -- always blaming America for all the ills of the world, while at the same time, whining for more of our money.)
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler is covering the tiff between President Bush and the U.N. over relief efforts.
What interests me the most is how people are reacting to this terrible tragedy. On the one hand, there are the environmentalists who are faulting human beings trying to improve the quality of their lives:
These environmentalists are a piece of work. They believe that man's moral duty is to sacrifice his own well being, comfort, quality of life, and pleasure for the non-human, in this case nature. They view human beings as interlopers who are raping benevolent Mother Nature. In their view, nature has a right to exist for its own sake, just -- because. But human beings have to bend over backward for Nature.
For a blunt objectivist commentary on environmentalists in general, click here.
For a religious perspective, Rabbi Daniel Lapin has an excellent commentary piece on how the lack of Judeo/Christian Western values, as opposed to poverty is to blame for the massive casualties:
To read Rabbi Lapin's entire commentary, click here.
I'm not going to give a blow by blow account of the mounting dead and how much each country is contributing, or how the U.N. has implied that the Western countries are "stingy" and should raise taxes, as that's already being done quite well by other sites.
Barking Moonbat Early Warning System does an excellent job of exposing Jan Egeland as an eternal malcontent who would milk us all like cows. (Heck it sounds like the entire U.N. to me -- always blaming America for all the ills of the world, while at the same time, whining for more of our money.)
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler is covering the tiff between President Bush and the U.N. over relief efforts.
What interests me the most is how people are reacting to this terrible tragedy. On the one hand, there are the environmentalists who are faulting human beings trying to improve the quality of their lives:
"Coasts are under threat in many countries," said Brad Smith at environmental group Greenpeace. "Development of roads, shrimp farms, ribbon development along coasts and tourism are eroding natural defenses in Asia."
Scientists say a build-up of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from human burning of fossil fuels threatens to trigger more powerful storms and raise sea levels, exposing coasts to more erosion.
Smith at Greenpeace said damage to coral reefs was also making coasts more vulnerable to battering by the sea.
These environmentalists are a piece of work. They believe that man's moral duty is to sacrifice his own well being, comfort, quality of life, and pleasure for the non-human, in this case nature. They view human beings as interlopers who are raping benevolent Mother Nature. In their view, nature has a right to exist for its own sake, just -- because. But human beings have to bend over backward for Nature.
For a blunt objectivist commentary on environmentalists in general, click here.
For a religious perspective, Rabbi Daniel Lapin has an excellent commentary piece on how the lack of Judeo/Christian Western values, as opposed to poverty is to blame for the massive casualties:
On December 26th, 2003, over 30,000 victims perished in the Iranian earthquake in the town of Bam. To explain the vast death toll inflicted by an earthquake no stronger than that which struck the Californian town of Paso Robles within a few days, Iranian authorities pleaded poverty. It costs considerably more to engineer large-scale nuclear capability as Iran has done, than it costs to retro-fit buildings for safety in an earthquake-prone zone. The problem is not poverty, it is priority.
We took seriously the commandment in the twenty-eighth verse of the Bible, And God blessed them (Adam and Eve) saying Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.
Not by coincidence did the overwhelming majority of these scientific and technical developments take place in the west.
Western civilizations second distinctive cultural imperative is the importance of preserving human life. This too derives directly from our Biblical roots and distinguishes us from the peculiar fatalism toward death found in so many other cultures.
Together, these two values enshrined in the west in general
He also implanted in us a culture in which each and every life is really important. That is why Deuteronomy chapter thirty states, I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.
To read Rabbi Lapin's entire commentary, click here.
