Death Is Easy

DEATH IS
EASY
by
Russell Madden


Freedom As If It Mattered

FREEDOM, 
As If
It Mattered
by
Russell Madden



Guardian Project

The Guardian
Project
by
Russell Madden




Random

RaNdoM
by
Russell Madden




 
 

 

GETTING ICED

by

Russell Madden

 

 





Like many people throughout the Midwest, my wife and I had the “pleasure” of dealing with yet another ice storm grinding its way across an already white, frigid landscape. Unlike the smaller disturbance of a week or so ago, this time we suffered a brown-out that eventually escalated into a full-blown outage. No lights. No stove. No heat. No television. No computer usage. No Internet access. We were reduced to huddling before a small gas fireplace for warmth and heating leftovers on an ancient Svea camp stove. For entertainment, we read and played cards.

Coincidentally, I am reading Atlas Shrugged for the third or fourth time. Each excursion into that massive tome yields new insights, new moments of recognition, new depths of enjoyment. In that time-frozen world, Rand painted a society in the throes of stagnation and facing a lingering death. Bleak, barren, and cold imagery dominants her portrayal of a culture that despises wealth, denigrates achievement, and jealously nurtures its petty envy and disdain for all that is good, moral, and worthy.

I cannot help but draw parallels between that decaying fictional society and the environmental movement that claws for our attention today. Both abhor technological advances. Both nod sagely at those who prefer constriction over growth, despair over joy, austerity over comfort. Both agree that humans are born to suffer, that we are a blight upon the earth, that we deserve to shrink into the ground, contrite and humble at our insignificance.

When Hank Rearden’s wife holds a party for their wedding anniversary, no one there beyond Hank and Dagny Taggart appreciate the achievements required to hold the darkness and the chill and the wind of the “natural” world at bay. The obliviousness of the simultaneously self-congratulatory and self-condemning guests to the skill and rationality and courage necessary to obtain their shell of protection is no different than the willful ignorance of today’s eco-fascists who castigate every one else for “ruining” the planet while they jet about in private planes, live in lavish homes, consume copious amounts of energy, and spend more wealth in a month than most of us will in a lifetime.

Sitting in the dark, shivering, wondering what new “surprise” Mother Nature has in store for us, I can only think about these anti-human monsters and grind my teeth in anger. They want me to cower in the night. They want me to feel tendrils of cold seeping into my bones. They want me to succumb to hunger pangs. They curl their lips at my desire to shove back the blackness with a blaze of light. They frown at my fondness for warmth and ease. They glower at humans like me who seek to control the world rather than be controlled by it.

I can only hope that any “environmentalist” who yammers about “climate change” and “global warming” and blames humans for what is simply part of a natural cycle; I hope such “carbon-footprint” obsessed fools are stuck somewhere, alone, without power, for weeks and months and years until the rest of the country finally realizes the sick and dangerous farce the eco-fascists have perpetrated upon a well-meaning but gullible public.

Until then, excuse me while I hold my hands above the fire and ponder what it really means to be “human.”


(from Don't Get Me Started!, 12-12-07)